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MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 



BY WALTER PATER. 



GASTON DE LATOUR : An Unfinished Romance. Prepared 
for the Press b)'- Charles L. Shadwell, Fellow of Oriel 
College. 

MISCELLANEOUS STUDIES : A Series of Essays. Prepared 
for the Press by Charles L. Shadwell, Fellow of Oriel 
College. 

GREEK STUDIES ; A Series of Essays. Prepared for the Press 
by Charles L. Shadwell, Fellow of Oriel College. 

'^MARIUS THE EPICUREAN : His Sensations and Ideas. 

IMAGINARY PORTRAITS : A Prince of Court Painters : 
Denys I'Auxerrois ; Sebastian van Storck ; Duke Carl of 
Rosenmold. 

THE RENAISSANCE : Studies in Art and Poetry. 

PLATO AND PLATONISM : A Series of Lectures. 

APPRECIATIONS, with an Essay on Style, 

ESSAYS FROM THE GUARDIAN. 



MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 



HIS SENSATIONS AND IDEAS 



BY 

WALTER PATER 

■ 1 

FELLOW OF BRASENOSE COLLEGE 



XetjUe/jtvos 6i'€ipos, ore firiKLaTat ai vvktcs 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
I 902 

A^i rights re&emed 



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TO 
HESTER AND CLARA 



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CONTENTS 



PART THE FIRST 



CHAP. 

I. "The Religion of Numa' 



PAGE 

I 



2. White-nights 9 

3. Change of Air 19 

4. The Tree of Knowledge . .... 31 

5. The Golden Book 40 

6. Euphuism ...,,..., 68 

7. A Pagan End 82 

PART THE SECOND 



8. Animula Vagula 

9. New Cyrenaicism 

10. On the Way 

11. "The Most Religious City in The World 

12. "The Divinity that doth hedge a King" 

13. The "Mistress and Mother" of Palaces 

14. Manly Amusement . . , , , 



93 
109 

120 
130 
142 
160 
174 



Vlll 



CONTENTS 



PART THE THIRD 

CHAP. PAGE 

15. Stoicism at Court „ 187 

16. Second Thoughts 195 

17. Beata Urbs 206 

iS. "The Ceremony of the Dart" .... 215 

19. The Will as Vision 227 



PART THE FOURTH 



20. Two Curious Houses — i. Guests . . . . 

21. Two Curious Houses— 2. The Church in Cecilia's 

House 

22. "The Minor Peace of the Church" 



Divine Service 



24. A Conversation not Imaginary 

25. Sunt Lacrim^ Rerum 

26. The Martyrs 

27. The Triumph of Marcus Aurelius 

28. Anima naturat.iter Christiana 



241 

253 
266 
2S0 
290 
313 
323 
331 
339 



PART THE FIRST 



CHAPTER I 



As, in the triumph of Christianity, the old religion 
lingered latest in the country, and died out at last as 
but paganism — the religion of the villagers, before the 
advance of the Christian Church ; so, in an earlier 
century, it was in places remote from town-life that the 
older and purer forms of paganism itself had survived 
the longest. While, in Rome, new religions had arisen 
with bewildering complexity around the dying old one, 
the earlier and simpler patriarchal religion, " the religion 
of Numa," as people loved to fancy, hngered on with 
little change amid the pastoral life, out of the habits and 
sentiment of which so much of it had grown. Glimpses 
of such a survival we may catch below the merely arti- 
ficial attitudes of Latin pastoral poetry ; in Tibullus 
especially, who has preserved for us many poetic details 
of old Roman religious usage. 

At mihi contingat patrios celebrare Penates, 
Reddereque antique menstrua thura Lari : 

— he prays, with unaffected seriousness. Something 
liturgical, with repetitions of a consecrated form of words, 
is traceable in one of his elegies, as part of the order of 

B ^ 



2 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap, 

a birthday sacrifice. The hearth, from a spark of which, 
as one form of old legend related, the child Romulus 
had been miraculously born, was still indeed an altar : 
and the worthiest sacrifice to the gods the perfect 
physical sanity of the young men and women, which the 
scrupulous ways of that religion of the hearth had tended 
to maintain. A religion of usages and sentiment rather 
than of facts and belief, and attached to very definite 
things and places — the oak of immemorial age, the rock 
on the heath fashioned by weather as if by some dim 
human art, the shadowy grove of ilex, passing into which 
one exclaimed involuntarily, in consecrated phrase, Deity 
is in this Place! Nw7ien Inest ! — it was in natural har- 
mony with the temper of a quiet people amid the 
spectacle of rural life, like that simpler faith between 
man and man, which Tibullus expressly connects with 
the period when, with an inexpensive worship, the old 
wooden gods had been still pressed for room in their 
homely little shrines. 

And about the time when the dying Antoninus Pius 
ordered his golden image of Fortune to be carried into 
the chamber of his successor (now about to test the 
truth of the old Platonic contention, that the world 
would at last find itself happy, could it detach some 
reluctant philosophic student from the more desirable 
life of celestial contemplation, and compel him to rule 
it), there was a boy living in an old country-house, half 
farm, half villa, who, for himself, recruited that body ol 
antique traditions by a spontaneous force of religious 
veneration such as had originally called them into being. 
More than a century and a half had past since Tibullus 
had written ; but the restoration of religious usages, and 
their retention where they still survived, was meantime 
come to be the fashion through the influence of imperial 
example ; and what had been in the main a matter of 
family pride with his father, was sustained by a native 



I MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 3 

instinct of devotion in the young Marius. A sense of 
conscious powers external to ourselves, pleased or dis- 
pleased by the right or wrong conduct of every circum- 
stance of daily life — that cottscience, of which the old 
Roman religion was a formal, habitual recognition, was 
become in hirii a powerful current of feeling and observ- 
ance. The old-fashioned, partly puritanic awe, the 
power of which Wordsworth noted and valued so highly 
in a northern peasantry, had its counterpart in the 
feeling of the Roman lad, as he passed the spot, 
" touched of heaven," where the lightning had struck 
dead an aged labourer in the field : an upright stone, 
still with mouldering garlands about it, marked the place. 
He brought to that system of symbolic usages, and they 
in turn developed in him further, a great seriousness — 
an impressibility to the sacredness of time, of life and 
its events, and the circumstances of family fellowship ; of 
such gifts to men as fire, water, the earth, from labour 
on which they live, really understood by him as gifts — a 
sense of religious responsibility in the reception of them. 
It was a religion for the most part of fear, of multi- 
tudinous scruples, of a year -long burden of forms ; yet 
rarely (on clear summer mornings, for instance) the 
thought of those heavenly powers afforded a welcome 
channel for the almost stifling sense of health and delight 
in him, and relieved it as gratitude to the gods. 

The day of the "little" or ^r'w^iQ A?TibarvaHa was come, 
to be celebrated by a single family for the welfare of all be- 
longing to it, as the great college of the Arval Brothers 
officiated at Rome in the interest of the whole state. At 
the appointed time all work ceases ; the instruments of 
labour lie untouched, hung with wreaths of flowers, 
while masters and servants together go in solemn pro- 
cession along the dry paths of vineyard and cornfield, 
conducting the victims whose blood is presently to be 
shed for the purification from all natural or supernatural 



4 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

taint of the lands they have "gone about." The old 
Latin words of the liturgy, to be said as the procession 
moved on its way, though their precise meaning was long 
since become unintelligible, were recited from an ancient 
illuminated roll, kept in the painted chest in the hall, 
together with the family records. Early on that day the 
girls of the farm had been busy in the great portico, 
filling large baskets with flowers plucked short from 
branches of apple and cherry, then in spacious bloom, 
to strew before the quaint images of the gods — Ceres 
and Bacchus and the yet more mysterious Dea Dia — as 
they passed through the fields, carried in their little 
houses on the shoulders of white-clad youths, who were 
understood to proceed to this office in perfect temper- 
ance, as pure in soul and body as the air they breathed 
in the firm weather of that early summer-time. The 
clean lustral water and the full incense-box were carried 
after them. The altars were gay with garlands of wool 
and the more sumptuous sort of blossom and green 
herbs to be thrown into the sacrificial fire, fresh gathered 
this morning from a particular plot in the old garden, 
set apart for the purpose. Just then the young leaves 
were almost as fragrant as flowers, and the scent of the 
bean-fields mingled pleasantly with the cloud of incense. 
But for the monotonous intonation of the liturgy by the 
priests, clad in their strange, stiff, antique vestments, 
and bearing ears of green corn upon their heads, secured 
by flowing bands of white, the procession moved in 
absolute stillness, all persons, even the children, abstain- 
ing from speech after the utterance of the pontifical 
formula, Favete Imgm's I — Silence ! Propitious Silence ! 
— lest any words save those proper to the occasion should 
hinder the religious efficacy of the rite. 

With the lad Marius, who, as the head of his house, 
took a leading part in the ceremonies of the day, there 
was a devout effort to complete this impressive outward 



I MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 5 

silence by that inward tacitness of mind, esteemed so 
important by religious Romans in the performance of 
these sacred functions. To him the sustained stillness 
without seemed really but to be waiting upon that interior, 
mental condition of preparation or expectancy, for which 
he was just then intently striving. The persons about 
him, certainly, had never been challenged by those 
prayers and ceremonies to any ponderings on the divine 
nature : they conceived them rather to be the appointed 
means of setting such troublesome movements at rest. 
By them, " the religion of Numa," so staid, ideal and 
comely, the object of so much jealous conservatism, 
though of direct service as lending sanction to a sort of 
high scrupulosity, especially in the chief points of 
domestic conduct, was mainly prized as being, through 
its hereditary character, something like a personal dis- 
tinction — as contributing, among the other accessories 
of an ancient house, to the production of that aristocratic 
atmosphere which separated them from newly -made 
people. But in the young Marius, the very absence 
from those venerable usages of all definite history and 
dogmatic interpretation, had already awakened much 
speculative activity ; and to-day, starting from the actual 
details of the divine service, some very lively surmises, 
though scarcely distinct enough to be thoughts, were 
moving backwards and forwards in his mind, as the 
stirring wind had done all day among the trees, and were 
like the passing of some mysterious influence over all 
the elements of his nature and experience. One thing 
only distracted him — a certain pity at the bottom of his 
heart, and almost on his lips, for the sacrificial victims 
and their looks of terror, rising almost to disgust at 
the central act of the sacrifice itself, a piece of 
everyday butcher's work, such as we decorously hide 
out of sight; though some then present certainly dis- 
played a frank curiosity in the spectacle thus permitted 



6 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap 

them on a religious pretext. The old sculptors of the 
great procession on the frieze of the Partlienon at Athens, 
have dehneated the placid heads of the victims led in it 
to sacrifice, with a perfect feeling for animals in forcible 
contrast with any indifference as to their sufferings. It 
was this contrast that distracted Marius now in the 
blessing of his fields, and qualified his devout absorption 
upon the scrupulous fulfilment of all the details of the 
ceremonial, as the procession approached the altars 

The names of that great populace of " little gods," 
dear to the Roman home, which the pontiffs had placed 
on the sacred list of the Indigitame7ita^ to be invoked, 
because they can help, on special occasions, were not 
forgotten in the long litany — Vatican who causes the 
infant to utter his first cry, Fabulinus who prompts his 
first word, Cuba who keeps him quiet in his cot, Domi- 
duca especially, for whom Marius had through life a 
particular memory and devotion, the goddess who watches 
over one's safe coming home. The urns of the dead in 
the family chapel received their due service. They also 
were now become something divine, a goodly company 
of friendly and protecting spirits, encamped about the 
place of their former abode — above all others, the father, 
dead ten years before, of whom, remembering but a tall, 
grave figure above him in early childhood, Marius habitu- 
ally thought as a genius a little cold and severe. 

Candidus insuetum miratur limen Olympi, 
Sub pedibu^que videt nubes et sidera. — 

Perhaps ! — but certainly needs his altar here below, and 
garlands to-day upon his urn. But the dead genii were 
satisfied with little — a few violets, a cake dipped in 
wine, or a morsel of honeycomb. Daily, from the time 
when his childish footsteps were still uncertain, had 
Marius taken them their portion of the family meal, at 
the second course, amidst the silence of the company. 



I MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 7 

They loved those who brought them their sustenance ; 
but, deprived of these services, would be heard wandering 
through the house, crying sorrowfully in the stillness of 
the night. 

And those simple gifts, like other objects as trivial — 
bread, oil, wine, milk — had regained for him, by their 
use in such rehgious service, that poetic and as it were 
moral significance, which surely belongs to all the means 
of daily life, could we but break through the veil of our 
familiarity with things by no means vulgar in themselves. 
A hymn followed, while the whole assembly stood with 
veiled faces. The fire rose up readily from the altars, 
in clean, bright flame — a favourable omen, making it a 
duty to render the mirth of the evening complete. Old 
wine was poured out freely for the servants at supper in 
the great kitchen, where they had worked in the im- 
perfect light through the long evenings of winter. The 
young Marius himself took 15ut a very sober part in the 
noisy feasting. A devout, regretful after-taste of what 
had been really beautiful in the ritual he had accom- 
plished took him early away, that he might the 
better recall in reverie all the circumstances of the 
celebration of the day. As he sank into a sleep, 
pleasant with all the influences of long hours in the 
open air, he seemed still to be moving in procession 
through the fields, with a kind of pleasurable awe. 
That feeling was still upon him as he awoke amid 
the beating of violent rain on the shutters, in the 
first storm of the season. The thunder which startled 
him from sleep seemed to make the solitude of his 
chamber almost painfully complete, as if the nearness 
of those angry clouds shut him up in a close place 
alone in the world. Then he thought of the sort of 
protection which that day's ceremonies assured. To 
procure an agreement with the gods — Facem deorum 
expo seer e : that was the meaning of what they had 



8 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap, i 

all day been busy upon. In a faith, sincere but half- 
suspicious, he would fain have those Powers at least 
not against him. His own nearer household gods 
were all around his bed. The spell of his religion as 
a part of the very essence of home, its intimacy, its 
dignity and security, was forcible at that moment ; only, 
it seemed to involve certain heavy demands upon him. 



CHAPTER II 

WHITE-NIGHTS 

I'o an instinctive seriousness, the material abode in 
which the childhood of Marius was passed had largely 
added. Nothing, you felt, as you first caught sight of 
that coy, retired place, — surely nothing coiild happen 
there, without its full accompaniment of thought or 
reverie. W kite- night s 1 so you- might interpret its old 
Latin name."'^ " The red rose came first," says a quaint 
German mystic, speaking of "the mystery of so-called 
white things," as being "ever an after-thought — the 
doubles, or seconds, of real things, and themselves but 
half-real, half-material — the white queen, the white witch, 
the white mass, which, as the black mass is a travesty 
of the true mass turned to evil by horrible old witches, 
is celebrated by young candidates for the priesthood with 
an unconsecrated host, by way of rehearsal." So, white- 
nights, I suppose, after something like the same analogy, 
should be nights not of quite blank forgetfulness, but 
passed in continuous dreaming, only half veiled by sleep. 
Certainly the place was, in such case, true to its fanciful 
name in this, that, you might very well conceive, in face 
of it, that dreaming even in the daytime might come to 
much there. 

The young Marius represented an ancient family 
whose estate had come down to him much curtailed 

* Ad Vigilias Albas. 



lo MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

through the extravagance of a certain Marcellus two 
generations before, a favourite in his day of the fashion- 
able world at Rome, where he had at least spent his 
substance with a correctness of taste Marius might seem 
to have inherited from him ; as he was believed also to 
resemble him in a singularly pleasant smile, consistent 
however, in the younger face, with some degree of sombre 
expression when the mind within was but slightly moved. 
As the means of life decreased, the farm had crept 
nearer and nearer to the dwelling-house, about which 
there was therefore a trace of workday negligence or 
homeliness, not without its picturesque charm for some, 
for the young master himself among them. The more 
observant passer - by would note, curious as to the 
inmates, a certain amount of dainty care amid that 
neglect, as if it came in part, perhaps, from a reluctance 
to disturb old associations. It was significant of the 
national character, that a sort of elegant ge7iUeman 
farming, as we say, had been much affected by some of 
the most cultivated Romans. But it became something 
more than an elegant diversion, something of a serious 
business, with the household of Marius ; and his actual 
interest in the cultivation of the earth and the care of 
flocks had brought him, at least, intimately near to those 
elementary conditions of life, a reverence for which, the 
grcrt Roman poet, as he has shown by his own half- 
mystic pre-occupation with them, held to be the ground 
of primitive Roman religion, as of primitive morals. 
But then, farm-life in Italy, including the culture of the 
olive and the vine, has a grace of its own, and might 
well contribute to the production of an ideal dignity 
of character, like that of nature itself in this gifted 
region. Vulgarity seemed impossible. The place, 
though impoverished, was still deservedly dear, full of 
venerable memories, and with a livin^o^ sweetness of its 
own for to-day. 



II MARIUS THE EPICUREAN ii 

To hold by such ceremonial traditions had been a 
part of the struggling family pride of the lad's father, to 
which the example of the head of the state, old Antoni- 
nus Pius — an example to be still further enforced by his 
successor — had given a fresh though perhaps some- 
what artificial popularity. It had been consistent with 
many another homely and old-fashioned trait in him, not 
to undervalue the charm of exclusiveness and immemorial 
authority, which membership in a local priestly college, 
hereditary in his house, conferred upon him. To set a 
real value on these things was but one element in that 
pious concern for his home and all that belonged to it, 
which, as Marius afterwards discovered, had been a 
strong motive with his father. The ancient hymn — Jana 
Novella I — was still sung by his people, as the new moon 
grew bright in the west, and even their wild custom of 
leaping through heaps of blazing straw on a certain night 
in summer was not discouraged. The privilege of augury 
itself, according to tradition, had at one time belonged to 
his race ; and if you can imagine how, once in a way, an 
impressible boy might have an inkli?ig, an inward mystic 
intimation, of the meaning and consequences of all that, 
what was implied in it becoming explicit for him, you 
conceive aright the mind of Marius, in whose house the 
auspices were still carefully consulted before every under- 
taking of moment. 

The devotion of the father then had handed on loyally 
— and that is all many not unimportant persons ever find 
to do — a certain tradition of life, which came to mean 
much for the young Marius. The feeling with which 
he thought of his dead father was almost exclusively 
that of awe ; though crossed at times by a not unpleasant 
sense of liberty, as he could but confess to himself, 
pondering, in the actual absence of so weighty and 
continual a restraint, upon the arbitrary power which 
Roman religion and Roman law gave to the parent 



12 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

over the son. On the part of his mother, on the 
other hand, entertaining the husband's memory, there 
was a sustained freshness of regret, together with 
the recognition, as Marius fancied, of some costly 
self-sacrifice to be credited to the dead. The life 
of the widow, languid and shadowy enough but for the 
poignancy of that regret, was like one long service to 
the departed soul ; its many annual observances center- 
ing about the funeral urn — a tiny, delicately carved 
marble house, still white and fair, in the family-chapel, 
wreathed always with the richest flowers from the garden. 
To the dead, in fact, was conceded in such places a 
somewhat closer neighbourhood to the old homes they 
were thought still to protect, than is usual with us, or 
was usual in Rome itself — a closeness which the living 
welcomed, so diverse are the ways of our human senti- 
ment, and in which the more wealthy, at least in the 
country, might indulge themselves. All this Marius fol- 
lowed with a devout interest, sincerely touched and awed 
by his mother's sorrow. After the deification of the 
emperors, we are told, it was considered impious so 
much as to use any coarse expression in the presence of 
their images. To Marius the whole of life seemed full 
of sacred presences, demanding of him a similar collected- 
ness. The severe and archaic religion of the villa, as 
he conceived it, begot in him a sort of devout circum- 
spection lest he should fall short at any point of the 
demand upon him of anything in which deity was con- 
cerned. He must satisfy with a kind of sacred equity, 
he must be very cautious lest he be found wanting to, 
the claims of others, in their joys and calamities — the 
happiness which deity sanctioned, or the blows in which 
it made itself felt. And from habit, this feeling of a 
responsibility towards the world of men and things, 
towards a claim for due sentiment concerning them on 
his side, came to be a part of his nature not to be put 



ri MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 13 

off. It kept him serious and dignified amid the Epi- 
curean speculations which in after years much engrossed 
him, and when he had learned to think of all religions as 
indifferent, serious amid many fopperies and through 
many languid days, and made him anticipate all his life 
long as a thing towards which he must carefully train 
himself, some great occasion of self-devotion, such as 
really came, that should consecrate his life, and, it might 
be, its memory with others, as the early Christian looked 
forward to martyrdom at the end of his course, as a seal 
of worth upon it. 

The traveller, descending from the slopes of Luna, 
even as he got his first view of the Port-of- Vemis, would 
pause by the way, to read the face, as it were, of so 
beautiful a dwelling-place, lying away from the white road, 
at the point where it began to decHne somewhat steeply 
to the marsh-land belov/. The building of pale red and 
yellow marble, mellowed by age, which he saw beyond 
the gates, was indeed but the exquisite fragment of a once 
large and sumptuous villa. Two centuries of the play 
of the sea-wind were in the velvet of the mosses which 
lay along its inaccessible ledges and angles. Here and 
there the marble plates had slipped from their places, 
where the delicate weeds had forced their way. The 
graceful wildness which prevailed in garden and farm 
gave place to a singular nicety about the actual habita- 
tion, and a still more scrupulous sweetness and order 
reigned within. The old Roman architects seem to have 
well understood the decorative value of the floor — the 
real economy there was, in the production of rich interior 
effect, of a somewhat lavish expenditure upon the surface 
they trod on. The pavement of the hall had lost some- 
thing of its evenness ; but, though a Httle rough to the 
foot, polished and cared for like a piece of silver, looked, 
as mosaic-work is apt to do, its best in old age. Most 
noticeable among the ancestral masks, each in its little 



14 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

cedarn chest below the cornice, was that of the wasteful 
but elegant Marcellus, with the quaint resemblance in 
its yellow waxen features to Marius, just then so full of 
animation and country colour. A chamber, curved 
ingeniously into oval form, which he had added to the 
mansion, still contained his collection of works of art ; 
above all, that head of Medusa, for which the villa was 
famous. The spoilers of one of the old Greek towns 
on the coast had flung away or lost the thing, as it seemed, 
in some rapid flight across the river below, from the 
sands of which it was drawn up in a fisherman's net, 
with the fine golden /a?m?i£B still clinging here and there 
to the bronze. It was Marcellus also who had contrived 
the prospect-tower of two storeys with the white pigeon- 
house above, so characteristic of the place. The little 
glazed windows in the uppermost chamber framed each 
its dainty landscape — the pallid crags of Carrara, like 
wildly twisted snow-drifts above the purple heath ; the 
distant harbour with its freight of white marble going to 
sea ; the lighthouse temple of Venus Speciosa on its dark 
headland, amid the long-drawn curves of white breakers. 
Even on summer nights the air there had always a 
motion in it, and drove the scent of the new-mown hay 
along all the passages of the house. 

Something pensive, spell-bound, and but half real, 
something cloistral or monastic, as we should say, united 
to this exquisite order, made the whole place seem to 
Marius, as it were, sacellum^ the peculiar sanctuary, of his 
mother, who, still in real widowhood, provided the 
deceased Marius the elder with that secondary sort of 
life which we can give to the dead, in our intensely 
realised memory of them — the " subjective immortality," 
to use a modern phrase, for which many a Roman epitaph 
cries out plaintively to widow or sister or daughter, still 
in the land of the living. Certainly, if any such con- 
siderations regarding them do reach the shadowy people. 



II MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 15 

he enjoyed that secondary existence, that warm place 
still left, in thought at least, beside the living, the desire 
for which is actually, in various forms, so great a motive 
with most of us. And Marius the younger, even thus 
early, came to think of women's tears, of women's hands 
to lay one to rest, in death as in the sleep of childhood, 
as a sort of natural want. The soft lines of the white 
hands and face, set among the many folds of the veil 
and stole of the Roman widow, busy upon her needle- 
work, or with music sometimes, defined themselves for 
him as the typical expression of maternity. Helping 
her with her white and purple wools, and caring for her 
musical instruments, he won, as if from the handling of 
such things, an urbane and feminine refinement, qualify- 
ing duly his country-grown habits — the sense of a certain 
delicate blandness, which he relished, above all, on 
returning to the " chapel " of his mother, after long days 
of open-air exercise, in winter or stormy summer. For 
poetic souls in old Italy felt, hardly less strongly than 
the English, the pleasures of winter, of the hearth, with 
the very dead warm in its generous heat, keeping the 
young myrtles in flower, though the hail is beating hard 
without. One important principle, of fruit afterwards in 
his Roman life, that relish for the country fixed deeply 
in him ; in the winters especially, when the sufferings of 
the animal world become so palpable even to the least 
observant. It fixed in him a sympathy for all creatures, 
for the almost human troubles and sicknesses of the 
flocks, for instance. It was a feeling which had in it 
something of religious veneration for life as such — for 
that mysterious essence which man is powerless to create 
in even the feeblest degree. One by one, at the desire 
of his mother, the lad broke down his cherished traps 
and springes for the hungry wild birds on the salt marsh. 
A white bird, she told him once, looking at him gravely, 
a bird which he must carry in his bosom across a 



i6 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap 

crowded public place — his own soul was like that! 
Would it reach the hands of his good genius on the 
opposite side, unruffled and unsoiled? And as his 
mother became to him the very type of maternity in 
things, its unfailing pity and protectiveness, and mater- 
nity itself the central type of all love; — so, that 
beautiful dwelling-place lent the reality of concrete out- 
line to a peculiar ideal of home, which throughout the 
rest of his life he seemed, amid many distractions of 
spirit, to be ever seeking to regain. 

And a certain vague fear of evil, constitutional in 
him, enhanced still further this sentiment of home as 
a place of tried security. His religion, that old Italian 
religion, in contrast with the really light-hearted religion 
of Greece, had its deep undercurrent of gloom, its sad, 
haunting imageries, not exclusively confined to the walls 
of Etruscan tombs. The function of the conscience, not 
always as the prompter of gratitude for benefits received, 
but oftenest as his accuser before those angry heavenly 
masters, had a large part in it ; and the sense of some 
unexplored evil, ever dogging his footsteps, made him 
oddly suspicious of particular places and persons. 
Though his liking for animals was so strong, yet one 
fierce day in early summer, as he walked along a narrow 
road, he had seen the snakes breeding, and ever after- 
wards avoided that place and its ugly associations, for 
there was something in the incident which made food 
distasteful and his sleep uneasy for many days afterwards. 
The memory of it however had almost passed away, 
when at the corner of a street in Pisa, he came upon an 
African showman exhibiting a great serpent : once more, 
as the reptile writhed, the former painful impression 
revived : it was like a peep into the lower side of the 
real world, and again for many days took all sweetness 
from food and sleep. He wondered at himself indeed, 
trying to puzzle out the secret of that repugnance, having 



I! MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 17 

no particular dread of a snake's bite, like one of his 
companions, who had put his hand into the mouth of 
an old garden-god and roused there a sluggish viper. A 
kind of pity even mingled with his aversion, and he could 
hardly have killed or injured the animals, which seemed 
already to suffer by the very circumstance of their life, 
being what they were. It was something like a fear of 
the supernatural, or perhaps rather a moral feeling, for the 
face of a great serpent, with no grace of fur or feathers, so 
different from quadruped or bird, has a sort of humanity 
of aspect in its spotted and clouded nakedness. There 
was a humanity, dusty and sordid and as if far gone in 
corruption, in the sluggish coil, as it awoke suddenly into 
one metallic spring of pure enmity against him. Long 
afterwards, when it happened that at Rome he saw, a 
second time, a showman with his serpents, he remembered 
the night which had then followed, thinking, in Saint 
Augustine's vein, on the real greatness of those httle 
troubles of children, of which older people make 
light ; but with a sudden gratitude also, as he 
reflected how richly possessed his life had actually 
been by beautiful aspects and imageries, seeing how 
greatly what was repugnant to the eye disturbed his 
peace. 

■ Thus the boyhood of Marius passed ; on the whole, 
more given to contemplation than to action. Less 
prosperous in fortune than at an earlier day there had 
been reason to expect, and animating his solitude, as he 
read eagerly and intelligently, with the traditions of the 
past, already he lived much in the realm of the 
imagination, an4 became betimes, as he was to continue 
all through Hfe, something of an idealist, constructing 
the world for himself in great measure from within, by 
the exercise of meditative power. ' A vein of subjective 
philosophy, with the individual for its standard of all 
things, there would be always in his intellectual scheme 

c 



f/ 



i8 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap, n 

of the world and of conduct, with a certain incapacity 
wholly to accept other men's valuations. And the 
generation of this peculiar element in his temper he 
could trace up to the days when his life had been so 
like the reading of a romance to him. Had the Romans 
a word for unzvorldly ? The beautiful word umbratilis 
perhaps comes nearest to it ; and, with that precise 
sense, might describe the spirit in which he prepared 
himself for the sacerdotal function hereditary in his 
family — the sort of mystic enjoyment he had in the 
abstinence, the strenuous self-control and ascesis, which 
such preparation involved. Like the young Ion in the 
beautiful opening of the play of Euripides, who every 
morning sweeps the temple floor with such a fund of 
cheerfulness in his service, he was apt to be happy in 
sacred places, with a susceptibiHty to their peculiar 
influences which he never outgrew ; so that often in 
after- times, quite unexpectedly, this feehng would 
revive in him with undiminished freshness. That first, 
early, boyish ideal of priesthood, the sense of dedication, 
survived through all the distractions of the world, and 
when all thought of such vocation had finally passed 
from him, as a ministry, in spirit at least, towards a sort 
of hieratic beauty and order in the conduct of life. 

And now what relieved in part this over-tension of 
soul was the lad's pleasure in the country and the open 
air ; above all, the ramble to the coast, over the marsh 
with its dwarf roses and wild lavender, and delightful 
signs, one after another — the abandoned boat, the ruined 
flood-gates, the flock of wild birds — that one was 
approaching the sea; the long summer -day of idleness 
among its vague scents and sounds. And it was char- 
acteristic of him that he relished especially the grave, 
subdued, northern notes in all that — the charm of the 
French or English notes, as we might term them — in 
the luxuriant Italian landscape. 



CHAPTER III 

CHANGE OF AIR 

Dilexi decorem domus tuae. 

That almost morbid religious idealism, and his health- 
ful love of the country, were both alike developed by 
the circumstances of a journey, which happened about 
this time, when Marius was taken to a certain temple 
of Aesculapius, among the hills of Etruria, as was then 
usual in such cases, for the cure of some boyish sick- 
ness. The religion of Aesculapius, though borrowed 
from Greece, had been naturalised in Rome in the 
old republican times ; but had reached under the 
Antonines the height of its popularity throughout the 
Roman world. That was an age of valetudinarians, in 
many instances of imaginary ones ; but below its various 
crazes concerning health and disease, largely multiplied 
a few years after the time of which I am speaking by 
the miseries of a great pestilence, lay a valuable, because 
partly practicable, belief that all the maladies of the 
soul might be reached through the subtle gateways of the 
body. 

Salus, salvation, for the Romans, had come to mean 
bodily sanity. The religion of the god of bodily health, 
Salvator, as they called him absolutely, had a chance 
just then of becoming the one religion ; that mild and 
philanthropic son of Apollo surviving, or absorbing, all 
other pagan godhead. The apparatus of the medical 



20 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap 

art, the salutary mineral or herb, diet or abstinence, and 
all the varieties of the bath, came to have a kind ot 
sacramental character, so deep was the feeling, in more 
serious minds, of a moral or spiritual profit in physical 
health, beyond the obvious bodily advantages one had of 
it; the body becoming truly, in that case, but a quiet 
handmaid of the soul. The priesthood or "family" 
of Aesculapius, a vast college, believed to be in possession 
of certain precious medical secrets, came nearest perhaps, 
of all the institutions of the pagan world, to the 
Christian priesthood ; the temples of the god, rich in 
some instances with the accumulated thank-offerings of 
centuries of a tasteful devotion, being really also a 
kind of hospitals for the sick, administered in a full 
conviction of the religiousness, the refined and sacred 
happiness, of a life spent in the relieving of pain. 

Elements of a really experimental and progressive 
knowledge there were doubtless amid this devout 
enthusiasm, bent so faithfully on the reception of health 
as a direct gift from God ; but for the most part his care 
was held to take effect through a machinery easily 
capable of misuse for purposes of religious fraud. 
Through dreams, above all, inspired by Aesculapius 
himself, information as to the cause and cure of a 
malady was supposed to come to the sufferer, in a belief 
based on the truth that dreams do sometimes, for 
those who watch them carefully, give many hints con- 
cerning the conditions of the body — those latent weak 
points at which disease or death may most easily 
break into it. In the time of Marcus Aurelius these 
medical dreams had become more than ever a fashion- 
able caprice. Aristeides, the " Orator," a man of 
undoubted intellectual power, has devoted six discourses 
to their interpretation ; the really scientific Galen has 
recorded how beneficently they had intervened in his 
own case, at certain turning-points of life ; and a belief 



Ill MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 21 

in them was one of the frailties of the wise emperoi 
himself. Partly for the sake of these dreams, living 
ministers of the god, more likely to come to one in his 
actual dwelling-place than elsewhere, it was almost a 
necessity that the patient should sleep one or more nights 
within the precincts of a temple consecrated to his 
service, during which time he must observe certain rules 
prescribed by the priests. 

For this purpose, after devoutly saluting the Lares, 
as was customary before starting on a journey, Marius 
set forth one summer morning on his way to the famous 
temple which lay among the hills beyond the valley of 
the x\rnus. It was his greatest adventure hitherto ; and 
he had much pleasure in all its details, in spite of 
his feverishness. Starting early, under the guidance of 
an old serving-man who drove the mules, with his wife 
who took all that was needful for their refreshment on 
the way and for the offering at the shrine, they went, 
under the genial heat, halting now and then to pluck 
certain flowers seen for the first time on these high 
places, upwards, through a long day of sunshine, while 
cliffs and woods sank gradually below their path. The 
evening came as they passed along a steep white road 
with many windings among the pines, and it was night 
when they reached the temple, the lights of which shone 
out upon them pausing before the gates of the sacred 
enclosure, while Marius became alive to a singular 
purity in the air. A rippling of water about the place 
was the only thing audible, as they waited till two priestly 
figures, speaking Greek to one another, admitted them 
into a large, white -walled and clearly lighted guest- 
chamber, in which, while he partook of a simple but 
wholesomely prepared supper, Marius still seemed to 
feel pleasantly the height they had attained to among 
the hills. 

The agreeable sense of all this was spoiled by one 



22 MARIUS Tlir: EPICUREAN chap. 

thing only, his old fear of serpents ; for it was under the 
form of a serpent that Aesculapius had come to Rome, 
and the last definite thought of his weary head before 
he fell asleep had been a dread either that the god 
might appear, as he was said sometimes to do, under 
this hideous aspect, or perhaps one of those great sallow- 
hued snakes themselves, kept in the sacred place, as he 
had also heard was usual. 

And after an hour's feverish dreaming he awoke — with 
a cry, it would seem, for some one had entered the room 
bearing a light. The footsteps of the youthful figure 
which approached and sat by his bedside were certainly 
real. Ever afterwards, when the thought arose in his 
mind of some unhoped-for but entire relief from distress, 
like blue sky in a storm at sea, would come back the 
memory of that gracious countenance which, amid all 
the kindness of its gaze, had yet a certain air of pre- 
dominance over him, so that he seemed now for the first 
time to have found the master of his spirit. It would 
have been sweet to be the servant of him \vho now sat 
beside him speaking. 

He caught a lesson from what was then said, still 
somewhat beyond his years, a lesson in the skilled 
cultivation of life, of experience, of opportunity, which 
seemed to be the aim of the young priest's recommenda- 
tions. The sum of them, through various forgotten 
intervals of argument, as might really have happened 
in a dream, was the precept, repeated many times under 
slightly varied aspects, of a diligent promotion of the 
capacity of the eye, inasmuch as in the eye would lie for 
him the determining influence of life : he was of the 
number of those who, in the words of a poet who came 
long after, must be " made perfect by the love of visible 
beauty." The discourse was conceived from the point 
of view of a theory Marius found afterwards in Plato's 
PhcedruSy which supposes men's spirits susceptible to 



Ill MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 23 

certain influences, diffused, after the manner of streams 
or currents, by fair things or persons visibly present — 
green fields, for instance, or children's faces — into the air 
around them, acting, in the case of some peculiar natures, 
like potent material essences, and conforming the seer 
to themselves as with some cunning physical necessity. 
This theory,* in itself so fantastic, had however deter- 
mined in a range of methodical suggestions, altogether 
quaint here and there from their circumstantial minute- 
ness. And throughout, the possibihty of some vision, 
as of a new city coming down " like a bride out of 
heaven," a vision still indeed, it might seem, a long way 
off, but to be granted perhaps one day to the eyes thus 
trained, was presented as the motive of this laboriously 
practical direction. 

/ " If thou wouldst have all about thee like the colours 
of some fresh picture, in a clear Hght," so the discourse 
recommenced after a pause, "be temperate in thy 
religious motions, in love, in wine, in all things, and of 
a peaceful heart with thy fellows." To keep the eye clear 
by a sort of exquisite personal alacrity and cleanliness, 
extending even to his dwelling-place ; to discriminate, 
ever more and more fastidiously, select form and colour 
in things from what was less select ; to meditate much 
on beautiful visible objects, on objects, more especially, 
connected with the period of youth — on children at play 
in the morning, the trees in early spring, on young 
animals, on the fashions and amusements of young men ; 
to keep ever by him if it were but a single choice flower, 
a graceful animal or sea-shell, as a token and repre- 
sentative of the whole kingdom of such things ; to avoid 
jealously, in his way through the world, everything 
repugnant to sight ; and, should any circumstance tempt 
him to a general converse in the range of such objects, 
to disentangle himself from that circumstance at any 

^ H drroppof] tov koAXovs. 



24 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

cost of place, money, or opportunity ; such were in brief 
outline the duties recognised, the rights demanded, in 
this new formula of life. And it was delivered with con- 
viction ; as if the speaker verily saw into the recesses of 
the mental and physical being of the listener, while his 
own expression of perfect temperance had in it a 
fascinating power — the merely negative element of purity, 
the mere freedom from taint or flaw, in exercise as a 
positive influence. Long afterwards, when Marius read 
the Charmides — that other dialogue of Plato, into which 
he seems to have expressed the very genius of old Greek 
temperance — the image of this speaker came back 
vividly before him, to take the chief part in the conver- 
sation. 

It was as a weighty sanction of such temperance, in 
almost visible symbolism (an outward imagery identifying 
itself with unseen moralities) that the memory of that 
night's double experience, the dream of the great sallow 
snake and the utterance of the young priest, always 
returned to him, and the contrast therein involved made 
him revolt with unfaltering instinct from the bare thought 
of any excess in sleep, or diet, or even in matters of 
taste, still more from any excess of a coarser kind. 

When he awoke again, still in the exceeding freshness 
he had felt on his arrival, and now in full sunlight, it was 
as if his sickness had really departed with the terror of 
the night : a confusion had passed from the brain, a 
painful dryness from his hands. Simply to be alive and 
there was a delight ; and as he bathed in the fresh 
water set ready for his use, the air of the room about 
him seemed like pure gold, the very shadows rich witli 
colour. Summoned at length by one of the white-robed 
brethren, he went out to walk in the temple garden. At 
a distance, on either side, his guide pointed out to him 
the Houses of Birth and Deaths erected for the reception 
respectively of women about to become mothers, and 



ii: MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 25 

of persons about to die ; neither of those incidents being 
allowed to defile, as was thought, the actual precincts of 
the shrine. His visitor of the previous night he saw 
nowhere again. But among the official ministers of the 
place there was one, already marked as of great celebrity, 
whom Marius saw often in later days at Rome, the 
physician Galen, now about thirty years old. He was 
standing, the hood partly drawn over his face, beside 
the holy well, as Marius and his guide approached it. 

This famous well or conduit, primary cause of the temple 
and its surrounding institutions, w^as supplied by the water 
of a spring flowing directly out of the rocky foundations 
of the shrine. From the rim of its basin rose a circle of 
trim columns to support a cupola of singular lightness 
and grace, itself full of reflected light from the rippHng 
surface, through which might be traced the wavy figure- 
work of the marble lining below as the stream of water 
rushed in. Legend told of a visit of Aesculapius to this 
place, earlier and happier than his first coming to Rome : 
an inscription around the cupola recorded it in letters of 
gold. " Being come unto this place the son of God loved 
it exceedingly: " — Hue prof ectusfili2is Dei maxwie cwiavit 
hunc loami ; — and it was then that that most intimately 
human of the gods had given men the well, with all its 
salutary properties. The element itself when received 
into the mouth, in consequence of its entire freedgm 
■from adhering organic matter, was more like a draught 
of wonderfully pure air than water; and after tasting, 
Marius was told many mysterious circumstances con- 
cerning it, by one and another of the bystanders : — he 
who drank often thereof might well think he had tasted 
of the Homeric lotus^ so great became his desire to 
remain always on that spot : carried to other places, it 
was almost indefinitely- conservative of its fine qualities : 
nay ! a few drops of it would amend other water ; and 
it flowed not only with unvarying abundance but with a 



26 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

volume so oddly rhythmical that the well stood always 
full to the brim, whatever quantity might be drawn from 
it, seeming to answer with strange alacrity of service to 
human needs, like a true creature and pupil of the phil- 
anthropic god. Certainly the little crowd around seemed 
to find singular refreshment in gazing on it. The whole 
place appeared sensibly influenced by the amiable and 
healthful spirit of the thing. All the objects of the 
country were there at their freshest. In the great park- 
like enclosure for the maintenance of the sacred animals 
offered by the convalescent, grass and trees were allowed 
to grow with a kind of graceful wildness ; otherwise, all 
was wonderfully nice. And that freshness seemed to 
have something moral in its influence, as if it acted upon 
the body and the merely bodily powers of apprehension, 
through the intelligence ; and to the end of his visit 
Marius saw no more serpents. 

A lad was just then drawing water for ritual uses, and 
Marius followed him as he returned from the well, more 
and more impressed by the religiousness of all he saw, 
on his way through a long cloister or corridor, the 
walls well-nigh hidden under votive inscriptions recording 
favours from the son of Apollo, and with a distant 
fragrance of incense in the air, explained when he turned 
aside through an open doorway into the temple 
itself. His heart bounded as the refined and dainty 
magnificence of the place came upon him suddenly, 
in the flood of early sunshine, with the ceremonial 
lights burning here and there, and withal a singular 
expression of sacred order, a surprising cleanliness and 
simplicity. Certain priests, men whose countenances 
bore a deep impression of cultivated mind, each with his 
little group of assistants, were gliding round silently to 
perform their morning salutation to the god, raising the 
closed thumb and finger of the right hand with a kiss in 
the air, as they came and went on their sacred business. 



Ill MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 27 

bearing their frankincense and lustral water. Around 
the walls, at such a level that the worshippers might 
read, as in a book, the story of the god and his sons, 
the brotherhood of the Asclepiadcc, ran a series of 
imageries, in low relief, their delicate light and shade 
being heightened, here and there, with gold. Fullest of 
inspired and sacred expression, as if in this place the 
chisel of the artist had indeed dealt not with marble 
but with the very breath of feeling and thought, w^as the 
scene in which the earliest generation of the sons of 
Aesculapius were transformed into healing dreams ; for 
"grown now too glorious to abide longer among 
men, by the aid of their sire they put away their mortal 
bodies, and came into another country, yet not indeed 
into Elysium nor into the Islands of the Blest. But 
being made like to the immortal gods, they began to 
pass about through the world, changed thus far from 
their first form that they appear eternally young, as many 
persons have seen them in many places — ministers and 
heralds of their father, passing to and fro over the earth, 
like gliding stars. Which thing is, indeed, the most 
wonderful concerning them ! " And in this scene, as 
throughout the series, with all its crowded personages, 
Marius noted on the carved faces the same peculiar 
union of unction, almost of hilarity, with a certain 
self-possession and reserve, which was conspicuous in 
the living ministrants around him. 

In the central space, upon a pillar or pedestal, hung, 
ex voto, with the richest personal ornaments, stood the 
image of Aesculapius himself, surrounded by choice 
flowering plants. It presented the type, still with some- 
thing of the severity of the earlier art of Greece about 
it, not of an aged and crafty physician, but of a youth, 
earnest and strong of aspect, carrying an ampulla or 
bottle in one hand, and in the other a traveller's staff, a 
pilgrim among his pilgrim worshippers; and one of the 



28 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

ministers explained to Marius this pilgrim guise. — One 
chief source of the master's knowledge of healing had 
been observation of the remedies resorted to by animals 
labouring under disease or pain — what leaf or berry the 
lizard or dormouse lay upon its wounded fellow ; to 
which purpose for long years he had led the life of a 
wanderer, in wild places. The boy took his place as 
the last comer, a little way behind the group of wor- 
shippers who stood in front of the image. There, with 
uplifted face, the palms of his two hands raised and 
open before him, and taught by the priest, he said 
his collect of thanksgiving and prayer (Aristeides has 
recorded it at the end of his Asclepiadce) to the Inspired 
Dreams : — 

"O ye children of Apollo! who in time past have stilled 
the waves of sorrow for many people, lighting up a lamp 
of safety before those who travel by sea and land, be 
pleased, in your great condescension, though ye be, equal in 
glory with your elder brethren the Dioscuri, and your 
lot in immortal youth be as theirs, to accept this prayer, 
which in sleep and vision ye have inspired. Order it 
aright, I pray you, according to your loving -kindness to 
men. Preserve me from sickness ; and endue my body 
with such a measure of health as may suffice it for the 
obeying of the spirit, that I may pass my days unhindered 
and in quietness." 

On the last morning of his visit Marius entered the 
shrine again, and just before his departure the priest, 
who had been his special director during his stay at the 
place, lifting a cunningly contrived panel, which formed 
the back of one of the carved seats, bade him look 
through. What he saw was like the vision of a new 
world, by the opening of some unsuspected window in 
a familiar dwelling-place. He looked out upon a long- 
drawn valley of singularly cheerful aspect, hidden, by -the 
peculiar conformation of the locality, from all points of 



Ill MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 



29 



observation but this. In a green meadow at the foot of 
che steep oHve-clad rocks below, the novices were taking 
their exercise. The softly sloping sides of the vale lay 
alike in full sunlight ; and its distant opening was closed 
by a beautifully formed mountain, from which the last 
wreaths of morning mist were rising under the heat. It 
might have seemed the very presentment of a land of 
hope, its hollows brimful of a shadow of blue flowers ; 
and lo ! on the one level space of the horizon, in a long 
dark line, were towers and a dome : and that was Pisa. 
— Or Rome, was it ? asked Marius, ready to believe the 
utmost, in his excitement. 

All this served, as he understood afterwards in retro- 
spect, at once to strengthen and to purify a certain vein 
of character in him. Developing the ideal, pre-existent 
there, of a religious beauty, associated for the future 
with the exquisite splendour of the temple of Aesculapius, 
as it dawned upon him on that morning of his first visit 
— it developed that ideal in connexion with a vivid 
sense of the value of mental and bodily sanity. And 
this recognition of the beauty, even for the esthetic 
sense, of mere bodily health, now acquired, operated 
afterwards as an influence morally salutary, counter- 
acting the less desirable or hazardous tendencies of 
some phases of thought, through which he was to 
pass. 

He came home brown with health to find the health 
of his mother failing ; and about her deatl^ which 
occurred not long afterwards, there was a circumstance 
which rested with him as the cruellest touch of all, in an 
event which for a time seemed to have taken the light 
out of the sunshine. She died away from home, but 
sent for him at the last, with a painful effort on her part, 
but to his great gratitude, pondering, as he always 
believed, that he might chance otherwise to look back 
all his life long upon a single fault with something like 



30 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap, in 

remorse, and find the burden a great one. For it 
happened that, through some sudden, incomprehensible 
petulance there had been an angry childish gesture, and 
a slighting word, at the very moment of her departure, 
actually for the last time. Remembering this he would 
ever afterwards pray to be saved from offences against 
his own affections ; the thought of that marred parting 
having peculiar bitterness for one, who set so much 
store, both by principle and habit, on the sentiment of 
home. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 

O mare ! O littus ! verum secretumque Movaelov, 
quam multa invenitis, quam multa dictatis ! 

Pliny's Letters, 

It would hardly have been possible to feel more seriously 
than did Marius in those grave years of his early life. 
But the death of his mother turned seriousness of feeling 
into a matter of the intelligence : it made him a 
questioner ; and, by bringing into full evidence to him 
the force of his affections and the probable importance 
of their place in his future, developed in him generally 
the more human and earthly elements of character. A 
singularly virile consciousness of the realities of life pro- 
nounced itself in him ; still however as in the main a 
poetic apprehension, though united already '.vith some- 
thing of personal ambition and the instinct of self- 
assertion. There were days when he could suspect, 
though it was a suspicion he was careful at first to put 
from him, that that early, much cherished religion of the 
villa might come to count with him as but one form of 
poetic beauty, or of the ideal, in things ; as but one voice, 
in a world where there were many voices it would be a 
moral weakness not to listen to. And yet this voice, 
through its forcible preoccupation of his childish con- 
science, still seemed to make a claim of a quite exclusive 
character, defining itself as essentially one of but two 
possible leaders of his spirit, the other proposing to him 



32 xMARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

unlimited self-expansion in a world of various sunshine. 
The contrast was so pronounced as to make the easy, 
light-hearted, unsuspecting exercise of himself, among 
the temptations of the new phase of life which had now 
begun, seem nothing less than a rival religion^ a rival 
religious service. The temptations, the various sunshine, 
were those of the old town of Pisa, where Marius was 
now a tall schoolboy. Pisa was a place lying just far 
enough from home to make his rare visits to it in childhood 
seem like adventures, such as had never failed to supply 
new and refreshing impulses to the imagination. The 
partly decayed pensive town, which still had its commerce 
by sea, and its fashion at the bathing-season, had lent, 
at one time the vivid memory of its fair streets of marble, 
at another the solemn outline of the dark hills of Luna 
on its background, at another the living glances of its 
men and women, to the thickly gathering crowd ol 
impressions, out of which his notion of the world was 
then forming. And while he learned that the object, 
the experience, as it will be known to memory, is really 
from first to last the chief point for consideration in the 
conduct of life, these things were feeding also the 
idealism constitutional with him — his innate and habitual 
longing for a world altogether fairer than that he saw. 
The child could find his way in thought along those 
streets of the old town, expecting duly the shrines at 
their corners, and their recurrent intervals of garden- 
court^, or side-views of distant sea. The great temple 
of the place, as he could remember it, on turning back 
once for a last look from an angle of his homeward road, 
counting its tall gray columns between the blue of the 
bay and the blue fields of blossoming flax beyond ; the 
harbour and its lights ; the foreign ships lying there ; the 
sailors' chapel of Venus, and her gilded image, hung with 
votive gifts; the seamen themselves, their women and 
children, who had a whole peculiar colour-world of their 



IV MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 33 

own — the boy's superficial delight in the broad light and 
shadow of all that was mingled with the sense of power, 
of unknown distance, of the danger of storm and possible 
death. 

To this place, then, Marius came down now from 
White-nights^ to live in the house of his guardian or 
tutor, that he might attend the school of a famous 
rhetorician, and learn, among other things, Greek. The 
school, one of many imitations of Plato's Academy in 
the old xA.thenian garden, lay in a quiet suburb of Pisa, 
and had its grove of cypresses, its porticoes, a house for 
the master, its chapel and images. For the memory 
of Marius in after-days, a clear morning sunlight seemed 
to he perpetually on that severe picture in old gray and 
green. The lad went to this school daily betimes, in 
state at first, with a young slave to carry the books, and 
certainly with no reluctance, for the sight of his fellow- 
scholars, and their petulant activity, coming upon the 
sadder sentimental moods of his childhood, awoke at 
once that instinct of emulation which is but the other 
side of sympathy; and he was not aware, of course, 
how completely the difference of his previous training 
had made him, even in his most enthusiastic participation 
in the ways of that httle world, still essentially but a 
spectator. While all their heart was in their limited 
boyish race, and its transitory prizes, he was already 
entertaining himself, very pleasurably meditative, with 
the tiny drama in action before him, as but the mimic, 
preliminary exercise for a larger contest, and already with 
an implicit epicureanism. AVatching all the gallant 
effects of their small rivalries — a scene in the main of 
fresh delightful sunshine — he entered at once into the 
sensations of a rivalry beyond them, into the passion of 
men, and had already recognised a certain appetite for 
fame, for distinction among his fellows, as his dominant 
motive to be. 

D 



34 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

The fame he conceived for himself at this time was, 
as the reader will have anticipated, of the intellectual 
order, that of a poet perhaps. And as, in that gray 
monastic tranquillity of the villa, inward voices from the 
reality of unseen things had come abundantly ; so here, 
with the sounds and aspects of the shore, and amid the 
urbanities, the graceful follies, of a bathing-place, it was 
the reality, the tyrannous reality, of things visible that 
was borne in upon him. The real world around — a 
present humanity not less comely, it might seem, than 
that of the old heroic days — endowing everything it 
touched upon, however remotely, down to its little 
passing tricks of fashion even, with a kind of fleeting 
beauty, exercised over him just then a great fascination. 

That sense had come upon him in all its power one 
exceptionally fine summer, the summer when, at a some- 
what earlier age than was usual, he had formally assumed 
the dress of manhood, going into the Forum for that 
purpose, accompanied by his friends in festal array. At 
night, after the full measure of those cloudless days, he 
would feel well-nigh wearied out, as if with a long 
succession of pictures and music. As he wandered 
through the gay streets or on the sea-shore, the real world 
seemed indeed boundless, and himself almost absolutely 
free in it, with a boundless appetite for experience, for 
adventure, whether physical or of the spirit. His entire 
rearing hitherto had lent itself to an imaginative, exalta- 
tion of the past ; but now the spectacle actually afforded 
to his untired and freely open senses, suggested the 
reflection that the present had, it might be, really 
advanced beyond the past, and he was ready to boast in 
the very fact that it was modern. If, in a voluntary 
archaism, the polite world of that day went back to a 
choicer generation, as it fancied, for the purpose of a 
fastidious self-correction, in matters of art, of literature, 
and even, as we have seen, of religion, at least it 



IV MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 35 

improved, by a shade or two of more scrupulous finish, 
on the old pattern ; and the new era, like the Neu-zeii 
of the German enthusiasts at the beginning of our own 
century, might perhaps be discerned, awaiting one just a 
single step onward — the perfected new manner, in the 
consummation of time, alike as regards the things of the 
imagination and the actual conduct of life. Only, while 
the pursuit of an ideal like this demanded entire liberty 
of heart and brain, that old, staid, conservative religion 
of his childhood certainly had its being in a world of 
somewhat narrow restrictions. But then, the one was 
absolutely real, with nothing less than the reality of seeing 
and hearing — the other, how vague, shadowy, prob- 
lematical ! Could its so limited probabilities be worth 
taking into account in any practical question as to the 
rejecting or receiving of what was indeed so real, and, on 
the face of it, so desirable ? 

And, dating from the time of his first coming to 
school, a great friendship had grown up for him, in that 
life of so few attachments — the pure and disinterested 
friendship of schoolmates. He had seen Flavian for the 
first time the day on which he had come to Pisa, at the 
moment when his mind was full of wistful thoughts 
regarding the new life to begin for him to-morrow, and he 
gazed curiously at the crowd of bustling scholars as they 
came from their classes. There was something in 
Flavian a shade disdainful, as he stood isolated from 
the others for a moment, explained in part by his stature 
and the distinction of the low, broad forehead ; though 
there was pleasantness also for the newcomer in the 
roving blue eyes which seemed somehow to take a fuller 
hold upon things around than is usual with boys. 
Marius knew that those proud glances made kindly note 
of him for a moment, and felt something like friendship 
at first sight. There was a tone of reserve or gravity 
there, amid perfectly disciplined health, which, to his 



36 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

fancy, seemed to carry forward the expression of the 
austere sky and the clear song of the blackbird on that 
gray March evening. Flavian indeed was a creature who 
changed mucli with the changes of the passing light and 
shade about him, and was brilliant enough under the 
early sunshine in school next morning. Of all that little 
world of more or less gifted youth, surely the centre was 
this lad of servile birth. Prince of the school, he had 
gained an easy dominion over the old Greek master by 
the fascination of his parts, and over his fellow-scholars 
by the figure he bore. He wore already the manly 
dress ; and standing there in class, as he displayed his 
wonderful quickness in reckoning, or his taste in 
declaiming Homer, he was like a carved figure in motion, 
thought Marius, but with that indescribable gleam upon 
it which the words of Homer actually suggested, as per- 
ceptible on the visible forms of the gods — 

Ota deo^s iirevrivodev alev idvras, 

A story hung by him, a story which his comrades acutely 
connected with his habitual air of somewhat peevish 
pride. Two points were held to be clear amid its 
general vagueness — a rich stranger paid his schooling, 
and he was himself very poor, though there was an 
attractive piquancy in the poverty of Flavian which in 
a scholar of another figure might have been despised. 
Over Marius too his dominion was entire. Three years 
older than he, Flavian was appointed to help the younger 
boy in his studies, and Marius thus became virtually his 
servant in many things, taking his humours with a sort 
of grateful pride in being noticed at all, and, thinking 
over all this afterwards, found that the fascination ex- 
perienced by him had been a sentimental one, dependent 
on the concession to himself of an intimacy, a certain 
tolerance of his company, granted to none beside. 

That was in the earHest days; and then, as theii 



IV MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 37 

intimacy grew, the genius, the intellectual power of 
Flavian began its sway over him. The brilliant youth 
who loved dress, and dainty food, and flowers, and 
seemed to have a natural alliance with, and claim 
upon, everything else which was physically select and 
bright, cultivated also that foppery of words, of choice 
diction, which was common among the elite spirits of 
that day ; and Marius, early an expert and elegant pen- 
man, transcribed his verses (the euphuism of which, amid 
a genuine original power, was then so delightful to him) 
in beautiful ink, receiving in return the profit of Flavian's 
really great intellectual capacities, developed and accom- 
plished under the ambitious desire to make his way 
effectively in life. Among other things he introduced 
him to the writings of a sprightly wit, then very busy 
with the pen, one Lucian — writings seeming to overflow 
with that intellectual light turned upon dim places, which, 
at least in seasons of mental fair weather, can make 
people laugh where they have been wont, perhaps, to 
pray. And, surely, the sunlight which filled those well- 
remembered early mornings in school, had had more 
than the usual measure of gold in it ! Marius, at least, 
would lie awake before the time, thinking with delight 
of the long coming hours of hard work in the presence 
of Flavian, as other boys dream of a holiday. 

It was almost by accident at last, so wayward and 
capricious was he, that reserve gave way, and Flavian 
told the story of his father — a freedman, presented late 
in life, and almost against his will, with the liberty so 
fondly desired in youth, but on condition of the sacrifice 
of part of his peculium — the slave's diminutive hoard — 
amassed by many a self-denial, in an existence necessarily 
hard. The rich man, interested in the promise of the 
fair child born on his estate, had sent him to school. 
The meanness and dejection, nevertheless, of that un- 
CKCupied old age defined thft leading memory of Flavian, 



38 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

revived sometimes, after this first confidence, with a burst 
of angry tears amid the sunshine. But nature had had 
her economy in nursing the strength of that one natural 
affection ; for, save his half-selfish care for Marl us, it was 
the single, really generous part, the one piety, in the 
lad's character. In him Marius saw the spirit of 
unbelief, achieved as if at one step. The much-admired 
freedman's son, as with the privilege of a natural aristo- 
cracy, believed only in himself, in the brilliant, and 
mainly sensuous gifts, he had, or meant to acquire. 

And then, he had certainly yielded himself, though 
still with untouched health, in a world where manhood 
comes early, to the seductions of that luxurious town, 
and Marius wondered sometimes, in the freer revelation 
of himself by conversation, at the extent of his early 
corruption. How often, afterwards, did evil things 
present themselves in malign association with the 
memory of that beautiful head, and with a kind of 
borrowed sanction and charm in its natural grace ! To 
Marius, at a later time, he counted for as it were an 
epitome of the whole pagan world, the depth of its cor- 
ruption, and its perfection of form. And still, in his 
mobility, his animation, in his eager capacity for various 
life, he was so real an object, after that visionary idealism 
of the villa. His voice, his glance, were like the breaking 
in of the solid world upon one, amid the flimsy fictions 
of a dream. A shadow, handhng all things as shadows, 
had felt a sudden real and poignant heat in them. 

Meantime, under his guidance, Marius was learning 
quickly and abundantly, because with a good will. 
There was that in the actual effectiveness of his figure 
which stimulated the younger lad to make the most of 
opportunity ; and he had experience already that 
education largely increased one's capacity for enjoyment. 
; He was acquiring what it is the chief function of all highei 
/ education to impart, the art, namely, of so relieving the 



IV MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 39 

ideal or poetic traits, the elements of distinction, in out 
everyday life — of so exclusively living in them — that the 
unadorned remainder of it, the mere drift or debris of 
our days, comes to be as though it were not. And the 
consciousness of this aim came with the reading of one 
particular book, then fresh in the world, with which he 
fell in about this time — a book which awakened the 
poetic or romantic capacity as perhaps some other book 
might have done, but was peculiar in giving it a direction 
emphatically sensuous. It made him. Id that visionary 
reception of every-day life, the seer, more especially, of 
a revelation in colour and form. If our modern educa- 
tion, in its better efforts, really conveys to any of us that 
kind of idealising power, it does so (though dealing 
mamly, as its professed instruments, with the most select 
and ideal remains of ancient literature) oftenest by 
truant reading ; and thus it happened also, long ago, 
with Marius and his friend 



CHAPTER V 



THE GOLDEN BOOK 



The two lads were lounging together over a book, half 
buried in a heap of dry corn, in an old granary — the 
quiet corner to which they had climbed out of the way of 
their noisier companions on one of their blandest holiday 
afternoons. They looked round : the western sun smote 
through the broad chinks of the shutters. How like a 
picture ! and it was precisely the scene described in 
what they were reading, with just that added poetic 
touch in the book which made it delightful and select, 
and, in the actual place, the ray of sunlight transforming 
the rough grain among the cool brown shadows into 
heaps of gold. What they were intent on was, indeed, 
the book of books, the " golden " book of that day, a 
gift to Flavian, as was shown by the purple writing or. 
the handsome yellow wrapper, following the title 
Flaviane ! — it said, 



Flaviane ! 


Flaviane ! 


Flaviane / 


lege 


Vivas! 


Vivas ! 


Feliciter ! 


Floreas ! 


Gandeas ! 



It was perfumed with oil of sandal-wood, and decorated 
with carved and gilt ivory bosses at the ends of the 
roller. 

And the inside was something not less dainty and 



CHAP. V MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 41 

fine, full of the archaisms and curious felicities in which 
that generation delighted, quaint terms and images 
picked fresh from the early dramatists, the lifelike phrases 
of some lost poet preserved by an old grammarian, racy 
morsels of the vernacular and studied prettinesses : — all 
alike, mere playthings for the genuine power and natural 
eloquence of the erudite artist, unsuppressed by his 
erudition, which, however, made some people angry, 
chiefly less well "got-up" people, and especially those 
who were untidy from indolence. 

No ! it was certainly not that old-fashioned, uncon- 
scious ease of the early literature, which could never 
come again ; which, after all, had had more in common 
with the " infinite patience " of Apuleius than with the 
hack-work readiness of his detractors, who might so well 
have been " self-conscious " of going shp-shod. And at 
least his success was unmistakable as to the precise 
literary effect he had intended, including a certain 
tincture of " neology " in expression — nonnihil iiiterdum 
elocutione novella parum signatuin — in the language of 
Cornelius Fronto, the contemporary prince of rhetoricians. 
What words he had found for conveying, with a single 
touch, the sense of textures, colours, incidents ! " Like 
jewellers' work ! Like a myrrhine vase !" — admirers 
said of his writing. "The golden fibre in the hair, the 
gold threadwork in the gown marked her as the mistress " 
— aurum in comis et in tunicis, ibi infiexiun hie intextum^ 
matronam profecto confitebatur — he writes, with his 
"curious felicity," of one of his heroines. Aurum 
i7itexium : gold fibre: — well! there was something of 
that kind in his own work. And then, in an age when 
people, from the emperor ' Aurelius downwards, prided 
themselves unwisely on writing in Greek, he had written 
for Latin people in their own tongue ; though still, in 
truth, with all the care of a learned language. Not less 
happily inventive were tiie incidents recorded — story 



12 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

within story — stories with the sudden, unlooked-foi 
changes of dreams. He had his humorous touches also. 
And what went to the ordinary boyish taste, in those 
somewhat pecuHar readers, what would have charmed, 
boys more purely boyish, was the adventure : — the bear 
loose in the house at night, the wolves storming the 
farms in winter, the exploits of the robbers, their charm- 
ing caves, the delightful thrill one had at the question — 
" Don't you know that these roads are infested by 
robbers ? " 

The scene of the romance was laid in Thessaly, the 
original land of witchcraft, and took one up and down 
its mountains, and into its old weird towns, haunts of 
magic and incantation, where all the more genuine 
appliances of the black art, left behind her by Medea 
when she fled through that country, were still in use. In 
the city of Hypata, indeed, nothing seemed to be its 
true self. — " You might think that through the murmur- 
ing of some cadaverous spell, all things had been 
changed into forms not their own; that there was 
humanity in the hardness of the stones you stumbled on; 
that the birds you heard singing were feathered men; that 
the trees around the w^alls drew their leaves from a like 
source. The statues seemed about to move, the walls 
to speak, the dumb cattle to break out in prophecy; 
nay ! the very sky and the sunbeams, as if they might 
suddenly cry out." Witches are there who can draw 
down the moon, or at least the lunar vines — that white 
fluid she sheds, to be found, so rarely, " on high, heathy 
places : which is a poison. A touch of it will drive 
men mad," 

And in one very remote village lives the sorceress 
Pamphile, who turns her neighbours into various animals. 
What true humour in the scene where, after mounting 
the rickety stairs, Lucius, peeping curiously through a 
chink in the door, is a spectator of the transformation of 



V MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 43 

the old witch herself into a bird, that she may take 
flight to the object of her affections — into an owl ! 
" First she stripped off every rag she had. Then opening 
a certain chest she took from it many small boxes, and 
removing the lid of one of them, rubbed herself over for 
a long time, from head to foot, with an ointment it con- 
tained, and after much low muttering to her lamp, began 
to jerk at last and shake her limbs. And as her limbs 
moved to and fro, out burst the soft feathers : stout 
wings came forth to view : the nose grew hard and 
hooked : her nails were crooked into claws ; and 
Pamphile was an owl. She uttered a queasy screech ; 
and, leaping litde by little from the ground, making trial 
of herself, fled presently, on full wing, out of doors." 

By clumsy imitation of this process, Lucius, the hero 
of the romance, transforms himself, not as he had 
intended into a showy winged creature, but into the 
animal which has given name to the book ; for through- 
out it there runs a vein of racy, homely satire on the 
love of magic then prevalent, curiosity concerning which 
had led Lucius to meddle with the old woman's appli- 
ances. " Be you my Venus," he says to the pretty maid- 
servant who has introduced him to the view of Pamphile, 
"and let me stand by you a winged Cupid!" and, 
freely applying the magic ointment, sees himself trans- 
formed, " not into a bird, but into an ass ! " 

Well ! the proper remedy for his distress is a supper 
of roses, could such be found, and many are his quaintly 
picturesque attempts to come by them at that adverse 
season ; as he contrives to do at last, when, the grotesque 
procession of Isis passing by w4th a bear and other 
strange animals in its train, the ass following along with 
the rest suddenly crunches the chaplet of roses carried 
in the High-priest's hand. 

Meantime, however, he must wait for the spring, with 
more than the outside of an ass ; " though I was not so 



44 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap 

much a fool, nor so truly an ass," he tells us, when 
he happens to be left alone with a daintily spread table, 
"as to neglect this most delicious fare, and feed upon 
coarse hay." For, in truth, all through the book, there 
is an unmistakably real feeling for asses, with bold 
touches like Swift's, and a genuine animal breadth. 
Lucius was the original ass, who peeping slily from the 
window of his hiding-place forgot all about the big 
shade he cast just above him, and gave occasion to 
the joke or proverb about "the peeping ass and his 
shadow." 

But the marvellous, delight in which is one of the 
really serious elements in most boys, passed at times, 
those young readers still feeling its fascination, into 
what French writers call the macabre — that species of 
almost insane preoccupation with the materialities of our 
mouldering flesh, that luxury of disgust in gazing on 
corruption, which was connected, in this writer at least, 
with not a little obvious coarseness. It was a strange 
notion of the gross lust of the actual world, that Marius 
took from some of these episodes. " I am told," they 
read, "that when foreigners are interred, the old witches 
are in the habit of out-racing the funeral procession, to 
ravage the corpse " — in order to obtain certain cuttings 
and remnants from it, with which to injure the living — 
" especially if the witch has happened to cast her eye 
upon some goodly young man." And the scene of the 
night-watching of a dead body lest the witches should 
come to tear off the flesh with their teeth, is worthy of 
Theophile Gautier. 

But set as one of the episodes in the main narrative, 
a true gem amid its mockeries, its coarse though 
genuine humanity, its burlesque horrors, came the tale of 
Cupid and Psyche, full of brilliant, life-like situations, 
speciosa locis^ and abounding in lov.ely visible imagery 
(one seemed to see and handle the golden hair, the 



V MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 45 

fresh flowers, the precious works of art in it !) yet full 
also of a gentle idealism, so that you might take it, if 
you chose, for an allegory. With a concentration of all 
his finer literary gifts, Apuleius had gathered into it the 
floating star-matter of many a delightful old story. — 

The story of Cupid and Psyche. 

In a certain city lived a king and queen who had 
three daughters exceeding fair. But the beauty of the 
elder sisters, though pleasant to behold, yet passed not 
the measure of human praise, while such was the loveli- 
ness of the youngest that men's speech was too poor to 
commend Jt worthily and could express it not at all. 
Many of the citizens and of strangers, whom the fame 
of this excellent vision had gathered thither, confounded 
by that matchless beauty, could but kiss the finger-tips 
of their right hands at sight of her, as in adoration to 
the goddess Venus herself. And soon a rumour passed 
through the country that she whom the blue deep had 
borne, forbearing her divine dignity, was even then 
moving among men, or that by some fresh germina- 
tion from the stars, not the sea now, but the earth, 
had put forth a new Venus, endued with the flower of 
virginity. 

This belief, with the fame of the maiden's loveliness, 
went daily further into distant lands, so that many 
people were drawn together to behold that glorious 
model of the age. Men sailed no longer to Paphos, to 
Cnidus or Cythera, to the presence of the goddess 
Venus : her sacred rites were neglected, her images 
stood uncrowned, the cold ashes were left to disfigure 
her forsaken altars. It was to a maiden that men's 
prayers were offered, to a human countenance they 
looked, in propitiating so great a godhead : when the 
girl went forth in the morning they strewed flowers on 



46 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap 

her way, and the victims proper to that unseen goddess 
were presented as she passed along. This conveyance 
of divine worship to a mortal kindled meantime the 
anger of the true Venus. " Lo ! now, the ancient 
parent of nature," she cried, "the fountain of all 
elements ! Behold me, Venus, benign mother of the 
world, sharing my honours with a mortal maiden, while 
my name, built up in heaven, is profaned by the mean 
things of earth ! Shall a perishable woman bear my 
image about with her? In vain did the shepherd of 
Ida prefer me ! Yet shall she have little joy, whosoever 
she be, of her usurped and unlawful loveliness ! " 
Thereupon she called to her that winged, bold boy, of 
evil ways, who wanders armed by night thro^igh men's 
houses, spoiling their marriages ; and stirring yet more 
by her speech his inborn wantonness, she led him to the 
city, and showed him Psyche as she walked. 

" I pray thee," she said, " give thy mother a full 
revenge. Let this maid become the slave of an 
unworthy love." Then, embracing him closely, she 
departed to the shore and took her throne upon the 
crest of the wave. And lo ! at her unuttered will, her 
ocean-servants are in waiting : the daughters of Nereus 
are there singing their song, and Portunus, and Salacia, 
and the tiny charioteer of the dolphin, with a host of 
Tritons leaping through the billows. And one blows 
softly through his sounding sea-shell, another spreads a 
silken web against the sun, a third presents the mirror 
to the eyes of his mistress, while the others swim side 
by side below, drawing her chariot. Such was the 
escort of Venus as she went upon the sea. 

Psyche meantime, aware of her loveliness, had no 
fruit thereof. All people regarded and admired, but 
none sought her in marriage. It was but as on the 
finished work of the craftsman that they gazed upon 
that divine likeness. Her sisters, less fair than she, 



V MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 47 

were happily wedded. She, even as a widow, sitting at 
home, wept over her desolation, hating in her heart the 
beauty in which all men were pleased. 

And the king, supposing the gods were angry, inquired 
of the oracle of Apollo, and Apollo answered him thus : 
*' Let the damsel be placed on the top of a certain 
mountain, adorned as for the bed of marriage and of 
death. Look not for a son-in-law of mortal birth ; but 
for that evil serpent-thing, by reason of whom even the 
gods tremble and the shadows of Styx are afraid." 

So the king returned home and made known the 
oracle to his wife. For many days she lamented, but at 
last the fulfilment of the divine precept is urgent upon 
her, and the company make ready to conduct the maiden 
to her deadly bridal. And now the nuptial torch 
gathers dark smoke and ashes : the pleasant sound of 
the pipe is changed into a cry : the marriage hymn 
concludes in a sorrowful wailing : below her yellow 
wedding-veil the bride shook away her tears ; insomuch 
that the whole city was afflicted together at the ill-luck of 
the stricken house. 

- But the mandate of the god impelled the hapless 
Psyche to her fate, and, these solemnities being ended, 
the funeral of the living soul goes forth, all the people 
following. Psyche, bitterly weepmg, assists not at her 
marriage but at her own obsequies, and while the 
parents hesitate to accomplish a thing so unholy the 
daughter cries to them : " Wherefore torment your luck- 
less age by long weeping? This was the prize of my 
extraordinary beauty ! When all people celebrated us 
with divine honours, and in one voice named the New 
Venus, it was then ye should have wept for me as one dead 
Now at last I understand that that one name of Venus 
has been my ruin. Lead me and set me upon the 
appointed place. I am in haste to submit to that well- 
omened marriage, to behold that goodly spouse. Why 



48 MARIUS THE EriCUREAN chap. 

delay the coming of him who was born for the destruc- 
tion of the whole world ? " 

She was silent, and with firm step went on the way. 
And they proceeded to the appointed place on a steep 
mountain, and left there the maiden alone, and took 
their way homewards dejectedly. The wretched parents, 
in their close - shut house, yielded themselves to 
perpetual night ; while to Psyche, fearful and trembling 
and weeping sore upon the mountain- top, comes the 
gentle Zephyrus. He Ufts her mildly, and, with vesture 
afloat on either side, bears her by his own soft breathing 
over the windings of the hills, and sets her lightly among 
the flowers in the bosom of a valley below. 

Psyche, in those delicate grassy places, lying sweetly 
on her dewy bed, rested from the agitation of her soul 
and arose in peace. And lo ! a grove of mighty trees, 
with a fount of water, clear as glass, in the midst ; and 
hard by the water, a dwelling-place, built not by human 
hands but by some divine cunning. One recognised, 
even at the entering, the delightful hostelry of a god. 
Golden pillars sustained the roof, arched most curiously 
in cedar-wood and ivory. The walls were hidden under 
wrought silver : — all tame and woodland creatures leap- 
ing forward to the visitor's gaze. Wonderful indeed was 
the craftsman, divine or half-divine, who by the subtlety 
of his art had breathed so wild a soul into the silver ! 
The very pavement was distinct with pictures in goodly 
stones. In the glow of its precious metal the house is 
its own daylight, having no need of the sun. Well 
might it seem a place fashioned for the conversation of 
gods with men ! 

Psyche, drawn forward by the delight of it, came 
near, and, her courage growing, stood within the door- 
way. One by one, she admired the beautiful things she 
saw ; and, most wonderful of all ! no lock, no chain, nor 
living guardian protected that great treasure house. But 



V MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 49 

as she gazed there came a voice — a voice, as it were 
unclothed of bodily vesture — " Mistress ! " it said, " all 
these things are thine. Lie down, and relieve thy weari- 
ness, and rise again for the bath when thou wilt. We 
thy servants, whose voice thou hearest,will be beforehand 
with our service, and a royal feast shall be ready." 

And Psyche understood that some divine care was 
providing, and, refreshed with sleep and the bath, sat 
down to the feast. Still she saw no one : only she 
heard words falling here and there, and had voices alone 
to serve her. And the feast being ended, one entered 
the chamber and sang to her unseen, while another 
struck the chords of a harp, invisible with him who 
played on it. Afterwards the sound of a company 
singing together came to her, but still so that none was 
present to sight ; yet it appeared that a great multitude 
of singers was there. 

And the hour of evening inviting her, she climbed 
into the bed ; and as the night was far advanced, behold 
a sound of a certain clemency approaches her. Then, 
fearing for her maidenhood in so great solitude, she 
trembled, and more than any evil she knew dreaded 
that she knew not. And now the husband, that un- 
known husband, drew near, and ascended the couch, 
and made her his wife ; and lo ! before the rise of dawn 
he had departed hastily. And the attendant voices 
ministered to the needs of the newly married. And so 
it happened with her for a long season. xA.nd as nature 
has willed, this new thing, by continual use, became a 
delight to her : the sound of the voice grew to be her 
solace in that condition of loneliness and uncertainty. 

One night the bridegroom spoke thus to his beloved, 
" O Psyche, most pleasant bride ! Fortune is grown 
stern with us, and threatens thee with mortal peril. 
Thy sisters, troubled at the report of thy death and 
seeking some trace of thee, will come to the mountain's 

E 



50 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap, 

top. But if by chance their cries reach thee, answer 
not, neither look forth at all, lest thou bring sorrow upon 
me and destruction upon thyself." Then Psyche 
promised that she would do according to his will. But 
the bridegroom was fled away again with the night. 
And all that day she spent in tears, repeating that she 
was now dead indeed, shut up in that golden prison, 
powerless to console her sisters sorrowing after her, or 
to see their faces ; and so went to rest weeping. 

And after a while came the bridegroom again, and 
lay down beside her, and embracing her as she wept, 
complained, "Was this thy promise, my Psyche? What 
have I to hope from thee? Even in the arms of 
thy husband thou ceasest not from pain. Do now as 
thou wilt. Indulge thine own desire, though it seeks 
what will ruin thee. Yet wilt thou remember my warning, 
repentant too late." Then, protesting that she is like 
to die, she obtains from him that he suffer her to see 
her sisters, and present to them moreover what gifts she 
would of golden ornaments ; but therewith he ofttimes 
advised her never at any time, yielding to pernicious 
counsel, to enquire concerning his bodily form, lest she 
fall, through unholy curiosity, from so great a height of 
fortune, nor feel ever his embrace again. " I would die 
a hundred times," she said, cheerful at last, " rather than 
be deprived of thy most sweet usage. I love thee as my 
own soul, beyond comparison even with Love himself. 
Only bid thy servant Zephyrus bring hither my sisters, 
as he brought me. My honeycomb ! My husband ! 
Thy Psyche's breath of life ! " So he promised ; and 
after the embraces of the night, ere the light appeared, 
vanished from the hands of his bride. 

And the sisters, coming to the place where Psyche 
was abandoned, wept loudly among the rocks, and called 
upon her by name, so that the sound came down to her, 
and running out of the palace distraught, she cried. 



V MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 51 

" Wherefore afflict your souls with lamentation ? I 
whom you mourn am here." Then, summoning 
Zephyrus, she reminded him of her husband's bidding ; 
and he bare them down with a gentle blast. " Enter 
now," she said, "into my house, and relieve your sorrow 
in the company of Psyche your sister." 

And Psyche displayed to them all the treasures of 
the golden house, and its great family of ministering 
voices, nursing in them the malice which was already 
at their hearts, x^nd at last one of them asks curiously 
who the lord of that celestial array may be, and what 
manner of man her husband ? And Psyche answered 
dissemblingly, " A young man, handsome and mannerly, 
with a goodly beard. For the most part he hunts upon 
the mountains." And lest the secret should slip from 
her in the way of further speech, loading her sisters with 
gold and gems, she commanded Zephyrus to bear them 
away. 

And they returned home, on fire with envy. "See 
now the injustice of fortune ! " cried one. " We, the 
elder children, are given like servants to be the wives of 
strangers, while the youngest is possessed of so great 
riches, who scarcely knows how to use them. You saw, 
Sister ! what a hoard of wealth lies in the house ; what 
glittering gowns ; what splendour of precious gems, 
besides all that gold trodden under foot. If she indeed 
hath, as she said, a bridegroom so goodly, then no one 
in all the world is happier. And it may be that this 
husband, being of divine nature, will make her too a 
goddess. Nay ! so in truth it is. It was even thus she 
bore herself. Already she looks aloft and breathes 
divinity, who, though but a woman, has voices for her 
handmaidens, and can command the winds." "Think," 
answered the other, " how arrogantly she dealt with us, 
grudging us these trifling gifts out of all that store, and 
when our company became a burden, causing us to be 



52 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

hissed and driven away from her through the air ! But 
I am no woman if she keep her hold on this great 
fortune ; and if the insult done us has touched thee too, 
take we counsel together. Meanwhile let us hold our 
peace, and know nought of her, alive or dead. For 
they are not truly happy of whose happiness other folk 
are unaware." 

And the bridegroom, whom still she knows not, warns 
her thus a second time, as he talks with her by night : 
" Seest thou what peril besets thee ? Those cunning 
wolves have made ready for thee their snares, of which 
the sum is that they persuade thee to search into the 
fashion of my countenance, the seeing of which, as I 
have told thee often, will be the seeing of it no more for 
ever. But do thou neither listen nor make answer to 
aught regarding thy husband. Besides, we have sown 
also the seed of our race. Even now this bosom grows 
with a child to be born to us, a child, if thou but keep 
our secret, of divine quality ; if thou profane it, subject 
to death." And Psyche was glad at the tidings, 
rejoicing in that solace of a divine seed, and in the 
glory of that pledge of love to be, and the dignity of the 
name of mother. Anxiously she notes the increase of 
the days, the waning months. And again, as he tarries 
briefly beside her, the bridegroom repeats his warning : 
" Even now the sword is drawn with which thy sisters 
seek thy life. Have pity on thyself, sweet wife, and 
upon our child, and see not those evil women again." 
But the sisters make their way into the palace once 
more, crying to her in wily tones, "O Psyche ! and thou 
too wilt be a mother ! How great will be the joy at 
home ! Happy indeed shall we be to have the nursing 
of the golden child. Truly if he be answerable to the 
beauty of his parents, it will be a birth of Cupid 
himself." 

So, little by little, they stole upon the heart of their 



V MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 53 

sister. She, meanwhile, bids the lyre to sound for their 
delight, and the playing is heard : she bids the pipes 
to move, the quire to sing, and the music and the 
singing come invisibly, soothing the mind of the listenei 
with sweetest modulation. Yet not even thereby was 
their malice put to sleep : once more they seek to know 
what manner of husband she has, and whence that seed. 
And Psyche, simple over-much, forgetful of her first 
story, answers, "My husband comes from a far country, 
trading for great sums. He is already of middle age, 
with whitening locks." And therewith she dismisses 
them again. 

And returning home upon the soft breath of Zephyrus 
one cried to the other, " What shall be said of so ugly 
a lie ? He who was a young man with goodly beard is 
now in middle life. It must be that she told a false 
tale : else is she in very truth ignorant what manner of 
man he is. Howsoever it be, let us destroy her quickly. 
For if she indeed knows not, be sure that her bridegroom 
is one of the gods : it is a god she bears in her womb. 
And let that be far from us ! If she be called mother 
of a god, then will life be more than I can bear." 

So, full of rage against her, they returned to Psyche, 
and said to her craftily, " Thou livest in an ignorant 
bliss, all incurious of thy real danger. It is a deadly 
serpent, as we certainly know, that comes to sleep at 
thy side. Remember the words of the oracle, which 
declared thee destined to a cruel beast. There are 
those who have seen it at nightfall, coming back from 
its feeding. In no long time, they say, it will end its 
blandishments. It but waits for the babe to be formed 
in thee, that it may devour thee by so much the richer. 
If indeed the solitude of this musical place, or it may 
be the loathsome commerce of a hidden love, delight 
thee, we at least in sisterly piety have done our part." 
And at last the unhappy Psyche, simple and frail of soul, 



54 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

carried away by the terror of their words, losing memory 
of her husband's precepts and her own promise, brought 
upon herself a great calamity. Trembling and turning 
pale, she answers them, "And they who tell those things, 
it may be, speak the truth. For in very deed never 
have I seen the face of my husband, nor know I at all what 
manner of man he is. Always he frights me diligently 
from the sight of him, threatening some great evil should 
I too curiously look upon his • face. Do ye, if ye can 
help your sister in her great peril, stand by her now." 

Her sisters answered her, "The way of safety we 
have well considered, and will teach thee. Take a sharp 
knife, and hide it in that part of the couch where thou 
art wont to lie : take also a lamp filled with oil, and set 
it privily behind the curtain. And when he shall have 
drawn up his coils into the accustomed place, and thou 
hearest him breathe in sleep, slip then from his side and 
discover the lamp, and, knife in hand, put forth thy 
strength, and strike off the serpent's head." And so 
they departed in haste. 

And Psyche left alone (alone but for the furies which 
beset her) is tossed up and down in her distress, like a 
wave of the sea ; and though her will is firm, yet, in the 
moment of putting hand to the deed, she falters, and is 
torn asunder by various apprehension of the great 
calamity upon her. She hastens and anon delays, now 
full of distrust, and now of angry courage : under one 
bodily form she loathes the monster and loves the bride- 
groom. But twilight ushers in the night ; and at length 
in haste she makes ready for the terrible deed. Darkness 
came, and the bridegroom ; and he first, after some faint 
essay of love, falls into a deep sleep. 

And she, erewhile of no strength, the hard purpose 
of destiny assisting her, is confirmed in force. With 
lamp plucked forth, knife in hand, she put by her 
sex ; and lo ! as the secrets of the bed became manifest, 



V MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 55 

the sweetest and most gentle of all creatures, Love him 
self, reclined there, in his own proper loveliness ! At 
sight of him the very flame of the lamp kindled more 
gladly ! But Psyche was afraid at the vision, and, faint 
of soul, trembled back upon her knees, and would have 
hidden the steel in her own bosom. But the knife 
shpped from her hand ; and now, undone, yet ofttimes 
looking upon the beauty of that divine countenance, she 
lives again. She sees the locks of that golden head, 
pleasant with the unction of the gods, shed down in 
graceful entanglement behind and before, about the 
ruddy cheeks and white throat. The pinions of the 
winged god, yet fresh with the dew, are spotfess upon 
his shoulders, the delicate plumage wavering over them 
as they lie at rest. Smooth he was, and, touched with 
light, worthy of Venus his mother. At the foot of the 
couch lay his bow and arrows, the instruments of his 
power, propitious to men. 

And Psyche, gazing hungrily thereon, draws an arrow 
from the quiver, and trying the point upon her thumb, 
tremulous still, drave in the barb, so that a drop of 
blood came forth. Thus fell she, by her own act, and 
unaware, into the love of Love. Falling upon the 
bridegroom, with indrawn breath, in a hurry of kisses 
from eager and open lips, she shuddered as she thought 
how brief that sleep might be. And it chanced that a 
drop of burning oil fell from the lamp upon the god's 
shoulder. Ah ! maladroit minister of love, thus to 
wound him from whom all fire comes ; though 'twas a 
lover, I trow, first devised thee, to have the fruit of his 
desire even in the darkness ! At the touch of the fire 
the god started up, and beholding the overthrow of her 
faith, quietly took flight from her embraces. 

And Psyche, as he rose upon the wing, laid hold on 
him with her two hands, hanging upon him in his passage 
through the air, till she sinks to the earth through 



56 MAKIUS THE EPICUREAN chap 

weariness. And as she lay there, the divine lover^ 
tarrying still, lighted upon a cypress tree which grew 
near, and, from the top of it, spake thus to her, in great 
emotion. " Foolish one ! unmindful of the command 
of Venus, my mother, who had devoted thee to one of 
base degree, I fled to thee in his stead. Now know I 
that this was vainly done. Into mine own flesh pierced 
mine arrow, and I made thee my wife, only that I 
might seem a monster beside thee — that thou shouldst 
seek to wound the head wherein lay the eyes so full of 
love to thee ! Again and again, I thought to put thee 
on thy guard concerning these things, and warned thee 
in loving-kindness. Now I would but punish thee by 
my flight hence." And therewith he winged his way 
into the deep sky. 

Psyche, prostrate upon the earth, and following far as 
sight might reach the flight of the bridegroom, wept and 
lamented ; and when the breadth of space had parted 
him wholly from her, cast herself down from the bank 
of a river which was nigh. But the stream, turning 
gentle in honour of the god, put her forth again unhurt 
upon its margin. And as it happened. Pan, the rustic 
god, was sitting just then by the waterside, embracing, in 
the body of a reed, the goddess Canna ; teaching her to 
respond to him in all varieties of slender sound. Hard 
by, his flock of goats browsed at will. And the shaggy 
god called her, wounded and outworn, kindly to him and 
said, " I am but a rustic herdsman, pretty maiden, yet 
wise, by favour of my great age and long experience; 
and i( I guess truly by those faltering steps, by thy 
sorrowful eyes and continual sighing, thou labourest with 
excess of love. Listen then to me, and seek not death 
again, in the stream or otherwise. Put aside thy woe, 
and turn thy prayers to Cupid. He is in truth a delicate 
youth : win him by the delicacy of thy service." 

So the shepherd-god spoke, and Psyche, answering 



V MAKIUS THE EPICUREAN 57 

nothing, but with a reverence to his serviceable deity, 
went on her way. And while she, in her search after 
Cupid, wandered through many lands, he was lying in 
the chamber of his mother, heart-sick. And the white 
bird which floats over the waves plunged in haste into 
the sea, and approaching Venus, as she bathed, made 
known to her that her son lies afflicted with some 
grievous hurt, doubtful of life. And Venus cried, angrily, 
" My son, then, has a mistress ! And it is Psyche, who 
witched away my beauty and was the rival of my 
godhead, whom he loves ! " 

Therewith she issued from the sea, and returning to 
her golden chamber, found there the lad, sick, as she had 
heard, and cried from the doorway, " Well done, truly ! 
to trample thy mother's precepts under foot, to spare my 
enemy that cross of an unworthy love ; nay, unite her to 
thyself, child as thou art, that I might have a daughter- 
in-law who hates me ! I will make thee repent of thy 
sport, and the savour of thy marriage bitter. There is 
one who shall chasten this body of thine, put out thy 
torch and unstring thy bow. Not till she has plucked 
forth that hair, into which so oft these hands have 
smoothed the golden light, and sheared away thy wings, 
shall I feel the injury done me avenged." And with 
this she hastened in anger from the doors. 

And Ceres and Juno met her, and sought to know 
the meaning of her troubled countenance. " Ye come 
in season," she cried ; " I pray you, find for me Psyche. 
It must needs be that ye have heard the disgrace of my 
house." And they, ignorant of what was done, would 
have soothed her anger, saying, " What fault, Mistress, 
hath thy son committed, that thou wouldst destroy the 
girl he loves ? Knowest thou not that he is now of age ? 
Because he wears his years so lightly must he seem to 
thee ever but a child ? Wilt thou for ever thus pry into 
the pastimes of thy son, always accusing his wantonness, 



58 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

and blaming in him those delicate wiles which are all 
thine own ? " Thus, in secret fear of the boy's bow, did 
they seek to please him with their gracious patronage. 
But Venus, angry at their light taking of her wrongs, 
turned her back upon them, and with hasty steps made 
her way once more to the sea. 

Meanwhile Psyche, tost in soul, wandering hither and 
thither, rested not night or day in the pursuit of her 
husband, desiring, if she might not soothe his anger by 
the endearments of a wife, at the least to propitiate him 
with the prayers of a handmaid. And seeing a certain 
temple on the top of a high mountain, she said, " Who 
knows whether yonder place be not the abode of my 
lord ? " Thither, therefore, she turned her steps, 
hastening now the more because desire and hope pressed 
her on, weary as she was with the labours of the way, 
and so, painfully measuring out the highest ridges of the 
mountain, drew near to the sacred couches. She sees ears 
of wheat, in heaps or twisted into chaplets ; ears of 
barley also, with sickles and all the instruments of 
harvest, lying there in disorder, thrown at random from 
the hands of the labourers in the great heat. These she 
curiously sets apart, one by one, duly ordering them; 
for she said within herself, " I may not neglect the 
shrines, nor the holy service, of any god there be, but 
must rather win by supplication the kindly mercy of 
them all." 

And Ceres found her bending sadly upon her task, 
and cried aloud, " Alas, Psyche ! Venus, in the 
furiousness of her anger, tracks thy footsteps through the 
world, seeking for thee to pay her the utmost penalty ; and 
thou, thinking of anything rather than thine own safety, 
hast taken on thee the care of what belongs to me ! " 
Then Psyche fell down at her feet, and sweeping the 
floor with her hair, washing the footsteps of the goddess 
in her tears, besought her mercy, with many prayers : — 



V MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 59 

" By the gladdening rites of harvest, by the lighted lamps 
and mystic marches of the Marriage and mysterious 
Invention of thy daughter Proserpine, and by all beside 
that the holy place of Attica veils in silence, minister, I 
pray thee, to the sorrowful heart of Psyche ! Suffer me 
to hide myself but for a few days among the heaps of 
corn, till time have softened the anger of the goddess, 
and my strength, out -worn in my long travail, be 
recovered by a little rest." 

But Ceres answered her, " Truly thy tears move me, 
and I would fain help thee ; only I dare not incur the 
ill-will of my kinswoman. Depart hence as quickly as 
may be." And Psyche, repelled against hope, afflicted 
now with twofold sorrow, making her way back again, 
beheld among the half-lighted woods of the valley below 
a sanctuary builded with cunning art. And that she 
might lose no way of hope, howsoever doubtful, she drew 
near to the sacred doors. She sees there gifts of price, 
and garments fixed upon the door-posts and to the 
branches of the trees, wrought with letters of gold which 
told the name of the goddess to whom they were dedi- 
cated, with thanksgiving for that she had done. So, with 
bent knee and hands laid about the glowing altar, she 
prayed saying, " Sister and spouse of Jupiter ! be thou 
to these my desperate fortunes, Juno the Auspicious ! I 
know that thou dost willingly help those in travail with 
child ; deliver me from the peril that is upon me." And 
as she prayed thus, Juno in the majesty of her godhead, 
was straightway present, and answered, "Would that I 
might incline favourably to thee ; but against the will of 
Venus, whom I have ever loved as a daughter, I may 
not. for very shame, grant thy prayer." 

And Psyche, dismayed by this new shipwreck of her 
hope, communed thus with herself, " Whither, from the 
midst of the snares that beset me, shall I take my way once 
more ? In what dark solitude shall I hide me from the all- 



6o MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

seeing eye of Venus ? What if I put on at length a 
man's courage, and yielding myself unto her as my 
mistress, soften by a humility not yet too late the fierce- 
ness of her purpose ? Who knows but that I may find 
him also whom my soul seeketh after, in the abode of 
his mother ? " 

And Venus, renouncing all earthly aid in her search, 
prepared to return to heaven. She ordered the chariot 
to be made ready, wrought for her by Vulcan as a 
marriage-gift, with a cunning of hand which had left his 
work so much the richer by the weight of gold it lost 
under his tool. From the multitude which housed about 
the bed-chamber of their mistress, white doves came 
forth, and with joyful motions bene their painted necks 
beneath the yoke. Behind it, with playful riot, the 
sparrows sped onward, and other birds sweet of song, 
making known by their soft notes the approach of the 
goddess. Eagle and cruel hawk alarmed not the quire- 
ful family of Venus. And the clouds broke away, as 
the uttermost ether opened to receive her, daughter and 
goddess, with great joy. 

And Venus passed straightway to the house of 
Jupiter to beg from him the service of Mercury, the god 
of speech. And Jupiter refused not her prayer. And 
Venus and Mercury descended from heaven together ; 
and as they went, the former said to the latter, " Thou 
knowest, my brother of Arcady, that never at any time 
have I done anything without thy help ; for how long 
time, moreover, I have sought a certain maiden in vain. 
And now nought remains but that, by thy heraldry, I 
proclaim a reward for whomsoever shall find her. Do 
thou my bidding quickly." And therewith she conveyed 
to him a little scrip, in the which was written the name 
of Psyche, with other things ; and so returned home. 

And Mercury failed not in his office ; but departing 
into all lands, proclaimed that whosoever dehvered up to 



▼ MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 6i 

Venus the fugitive girl, should receive from herself seven 
kisses — one thereof full of the inmost honey of her 
throat. With that the doubt of Psyche was ended. 
And now, as she came near to the doors of Venus, one 
of the household, whose name was Use-and-Wont, ran 
out to her, crying, " Hast thou learned. Wicked Maid ! 
now at last ! that thou hast a mistress ? " and seizing her 
roughly by the hair, drew her into the presence of 
Venus. And when Venus saw her, she cried out, 
saying, "Thou hast deigned then to make thy saluta- 
tions to thy mother-in-law. Now will I in turn treat 
thee as becometh a dutiful daughter-in-law ! " 

And she took barley and millet and poppy -seed, 
every kind of grain and seed, and mixed them together, 
and laughed, and said to her : " Methinks so plain a 
maiden can earn lovers only by industrious ministry : 
now will I also make trial of thy service. Sort me this 
heap of seed, the one kind from the others, grain by 
grain ; and get thy task done before the evening." And 
Psyche, stunned by the cruelty of her bidding, was 
silent, and moved not her hand to the inextricable heap. 
And there came forth a little ant, which had understand- 
ing of the difficulty of her task, and took pity upon the 
consort of the god of Love ; and he ran deftly hither 
and thither, and called together the whole army of his 
fellows. " Have pity," he cried, " nimble scholars of 
the Earth, Mother of all things ! — have pity upon the 
wife of Love, and hasten to help her in her perilous 
effort." Then, one upon the other, the hosts of the insect 
people hurried together ; and they sorted asunder the 
whole heap of seed, separating every grain after its kind, 
and so departed quickly out of sight. 

And at nightfall Venus returned, and seeing that 
task finished with so wonderful diligence, she cried, 
" The work is not thine, thou naughty maid, but his in 
whose eyes thou hast found favour." And calling her 



62 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

again in the morning, "See now the grove," she said, 
"beyond yonder torrent. Certain sheep feed there, 
whose fleeces shine with gold. Fetch me straightway a 
lock of that precious stuff, having gotten it as thou 
mayst." 

And Psyche went forth willingly, not to obey the 
command of Venus, but even to seek a rest from her 
labour in the depths of the river. But from the river, 
the green reed, lowly mother of music, spake to her : 
" O Psyche ! pollute not these waters by self-destruction, 
nor approach that terrible flock ; for, as the heat groweth, 
they wax fierce. Lie down under yon plane-tree, till 
the quiet of the river's breath have soothed them. 
Thereafter thou mayst shake down the fleecy gold 
from the trees of the grove, for it holdeth by the 
leaves." 

And Psyche, instructed thus by the simple reed, in 
the humanity of its heart, filled her bosom with the soft 
golden stuff, and returned to Venus. But the goddess 
smiled bitterly, and said to her, " Well know I who was 
the author of this thing also. I will make further trial 
of thy discretion, and the boldness of thy heart. Seest 
thou the utmost peak of yonder steep mountain ? The 
dark stream which flows down thence waters the Stygian 
fields, and swells the flood of Cocytus. Bring me now, 
in this little urn, a draught from its innermost source." 
And therewith she put into her hands a vessel of wrought 
crystal. 

And Psyche set forth in haste on her way to the 
mountain, looking there at last to find the end of her 
hapless life. But when she came to the region which 
borders on the cliff that was showed to her, she under- 
stood the deadly nature of her task. From a great rock, 
steep and slippery, a horrible river of water poured 
forth, falling straightway by a channel exceeding narrow 
into the unseen gulf below. And lo ! creeping from the 



V MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 63 

rocks on either hand, angry serpents, with their long 
necks and sleepless eyes. The very waters found a 
voice and bade her depart, in smothered cries of, Depart 
hence ! and What doest thou here ? Look around thee ! 
and Destruction is upon thee ! And then sense left her, 
in the immensity of her peril, as one changed to 
stone. 

Yet not even then did the distress of this innocent 
soul escape the steady eye of a gentle providence. For 
the bird of Jupiter spread his wings and took flight to 
her, and asked her, " Didst thou think, simple one, 
even thou ! that thou couldst steal one drop of that 
relentless stream, the holy river of Styx, terrible even to 
the gods? But give me thine urn." And the bird 
took the urn, and filled it at the source, and returned to 
her quickly from among the teeth of the serpents, bring- 
ing with him of the waters, all unwilling — nay ! warning 
him to depart away and not molest them. 

And she, receiving the urn with great joy, ran back 
quickly that she might deliver it to Venus, and yet 
again satisfied not the angry goddess. " My child ! " 
she said, "in this one thing further must thou serve 
me. Take now this tiny casket, and get thee down 
even unto hell, and deliver it to Proserpine. Tell her 
that Venus would have of her beauty so much at least 
as may suffice for but one day's use, that beauty she 
possessed erewhile being foreworn and spoiled, through 
her tendance upon the sick-bed of her son ; and be not 
slow in returning." 

And Psyche perceived there the last ebbing of hei 
fortune — that she was now thrust openly upon death, 
who must go down, of her own motion, to Hades and 
the Shades. And straightway she climbed to the top of 
an exceeding high tower, thinking within herself, " I will 
cast myself down thence : so shall I descend most 
quickly into the kingdom of the dead." And the tower 



64 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

again, broke forth into speech : " Wretched Maid ! 
Wretched Maid! Wilt thou destroy thyself? If the 
breath quit thy body, then wilt thou indeed go down into 
Hades, but by no means return hither. Listen to me. 
Among' the pathless wilds not far from this place lies 
a certain mountain, and therein one of hell's vent-holes. 
Through the breach a rough way lies open, following 
which thou wilt come, by straight course, to the castle 
of Orcus. And thou must not go empty-handed. Take 
in each hand a morsel of barley -bread, soaked in 
hydromel ; and in thy mouth two pieces of money. 
And when thou shalt be now well onward in the way of 
death, then wilt thou overtake a lame ass laden with wood, 
and a lame driver, who will pray thee reach him certain 
cords to fasten the burden which is falling from the ass : 
but be thou cautious to pass on in silence. And soon 
as thou comest to the river of the dead, Charon, in that 
crazy bark he hath, will put thee over upon the further 
side. There is greed even among the dead : and thou 
shalt deliver to him, for the ferrying, one of those two 
pieces of money, in such wise that he take it with his 
hand from between thy lips. And as thou passest over 
the stream, a dead old man, rising on the water, will put 
up to thee his mouldering hands, and pray thee draw 
him into the ferry-boat. But beware thou yield not to 
unlawful pity. 

" When thou shalt be come over, and art upon the 
causeway, certain aged women, spinning, will cry to thee 
to lend thy hand to their work ; and beware again that 
thou take no part therein ; for this also is the snare of 
Venus, whereby she would cause thee to cast away one 
at least of those cakes thou bearest in thy hands. 
And think not that a slight matter ; for the loss of either 
one of them will be to thee the losing of the light of 
day. For a watch-dog exceeding fierce lies ever before 
the threshold of that lonely house of Proserpine. Close 



V MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 65 

his mouth with one of thy cakes ; so shalt thou pass by 
him, and enter straightway into the presence of Proser- 
pine herself. Then do thou dehver thy message, and 
taking what she shall give thee, return back again ; 
offering to the watch-dog the other cake, and to the 
ferryman that other piece of money thou hast in thy 
mouth. After this manner mayst thou return again 
beneath the stars. But withal, I charge thee, think not 
to look into, nor open, the casket thou bearest, with that 
treasure of the beauty of the divine countenance hidden 
therein." 

So spake the stones of the tower; and Psyche 
delayed not, but proceeding diligently after the manner 
enjoined, entered into the house of Proserpine, at whose 
feet she sat down humbly, and would neither the 
delicate couch nor that divine food the goddess offered 
her, but did straightway the business of Venus. And 
Proserpine filled the casket secretly, and shut the lid, 
and delivered it to Psyche, who fled therewith from Hades 
with new strength. But coming back into the light of 
day, even as she hasted now to the ending of her 
service, she was seized by a rash curiosity. " Lo ! now," 
she said within herself, " my simpleness ! who bearing 
in my hands the divine loveliness, heed not to touch 
myself with a particle at least therefrom, that I may 
please the more, by the favour of it, my fair one, my 
beloved." Even as she spoke, she lifted the lid; and 
behold ! within, neither beauty, nor anything beside, 
save sleep only, the sleep of the dead, which took hold 
upon her, filling all her members with its drowsy 
vapour, so that she lay down in the way and moved not, 
as in the slumber of death. 

And Cupid being healed of his wound, because he 
would endure no longer the absence of her he loved, 
gliding through the narrow window of the chamber 
wherein he was holden, his pinions being now repaired 

F 



66 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

by a little rest, fled forth swiftly upon them, and coming 
to the place where Psyche was, shook that sleep away 
from her, and set him in his prison again, awaking 
her with the innocent point of his arrow. " Lo ! thine 
old error again," he said, "which had hke once 
more to have destroyed thee ! But do thou now what 
is lacking of the command of my mother : the rest shall 
be my care." With these words, the lover rose upon 
the air ; and being consumed inwardly with the 
greatness of his love, penetrated with vehement wing 
into the highest place of heaven, to lay his cause before 
the father of the gods. And the father of gods took 
his hand in his, and kissed his face, and said to him, 
"At no time, my son, hast thou regarded me with due 
honour. Often hast thou vexed my bosom, wherein 
lies the disposition of the stars, with those busy darts of 
thine. Nevertheless, because thou hast grown up be- 
tween these mine hands, I will accomplish thy desire." 
And straightway he bade Mercury call the gods together ; 
and, the council-chamber being filled, sitting upon a high 
throne, " Ye gods," he said, " all ye whose names are in 
the white book of the Muses, ye know yonder lad. It 
seems good to me that his youthful heats should by some 
means be restrained. And that all occasion may be 
taken from him, I would even confine him in the bonds 
of marriage. He has chosen and embraced a mortal 
maiden. Let him have fruit of his love, and possess her 
for ever." 

Thereupon he bade Mercury produce Psyche in 
heaven ; and holding out to her his ambrosial cup. 
"Take it," he said, "and live for ever; nor shall 
Cupid ever depart from thee." And the gods sat 
down together to the marriage - feast. On the first 
couch lay the bridegroom, and Psyche in his bosom. 
His rustic serving-boy bare the wine to Jupiter ; and 
Bacchus to the rest. The Seasons crimsoned all things 



V MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 67 

with their roses. Apollo sang to the lyre, while a little 
Pan prattled on his reeds, and Venus danced very sweetly 
to the soft music. Thus, with due rites, did Psyche 
pass into the power of Cupid ; and from them was born 
the daughter whom men call Voluptas. 



CHAPTER VI 

EUPHUISM 

So the famous story composed itself in the memory oi 
Mariiis, with an expression changed in some ways from 
the original and on the whole graver. The petulant, 
boyish Cupid of Apuleius was become more like that 
" Lord, of terrible aspect," who stood at Dante's bedside 
and wept, or had at least grown to the manly earnestness 
of the £rds of Praxiteles. Set in relief amid the coarser 
matter of the book, this episode of Cupid and Psyche 
served to combine many lines of meditation, already 
familiar to Marius, into the ideal of a perfect imaginative 
love, centered upon a type of beauty entirely flawless 
and clean — an ideal which never wholly faded from his 
thoughts, though he valued it at various times in different 
degrees. The human body in its beauty, as the highest 
potency of all the beauty of material objects, seemed to 
him just then to be matter no longer, but, having taken 
celestial fire, to assert itself as indeed the true, though 
visible, soul or spirit in things. In contrast with that 
ideal, in all the pure brilliancy, and as it were in the 
happy light, of youth and morning and the springtide, 
men's actual loves, with which at many points the book 
brings one into close contact, might appear to him, like 
the general tenor of their lives, to be somewhat mean 
and sordid. The hiddenness of perfect things : a shrinking 



CHAP. VI MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 69 

mysticism, a sentiment of diffidence like that expressed in 
Psyche's so tremulous hope concerning the child to be 
born of the husband she has never yet seen — " in the 
face of this little child, at the least, shall I apprehend 
thine " — in hoc saltern parvulo cognoscam faciem tuam : 
the fatality which seems to haunt any signal beauty, 
whether moral or physical, as if it were in itself 
something illicit and isolating : the suspicion and 
hatred it so often excites in the vulgar : — these were 
some of the impressions, forming, as they do, a con- 
stant tradition of somewhat cynical pagan experience, 
from Medusa and Helen downwards, which the old 
story enforced on him. A book, like a person, has 
its fortunes with one ; is lucky or unlucky in the 
precise moment of its falling in our way, and often by 
some happy accident counts with us for something more 
than its independent value. The Meta?norphoses of 
Apuleius, coming to Marius just then, figured for him 
as indeed The Golden Book: he felt a sort of personal 
gratitude to its writer, and saw in it doubtless far more 
than was really there for any other reader. It occupied 
always a peculiar place in his remembrance, never quite 
losing its power in frequent return to it for the revival 
of that first glowing impression. 

Its effect upon the elder youth was a more practical 
one : it stimulated the literary ambition, already so strong 
a motive with him, by a signal example of success, and 
made him more than ever an ardent, indefatigable 
student of words, of the means or instrument of the 
literary art. 'The secrets of utterance, of expression 
itself, of that through which alone any intellectual or 
spiritual power within one can actually take effect upon 
others, to over-awe or charm them to one's side, pre- 
sented themselves to this ambitious lad in immediate 
connexion with that desire for predominance, for the 
satisfaction of which another might have relied on the 



70 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chaf 

acquisition and display of brilliant military qualities. In 
him, a fine instinctive sentiment of the exact value 
and power of words was connate with the eager 
longing for sway over his fellows. He saw himself 
already a gallant and effective leader, innovating or 
conservative as occasion might require, in the rehabilita- 
tion of the mother-tongue, then fallen so tarnished and 
languid ; yet the sole object, as he mused within himself, 
of the only sort of patriotic feeling proper, or possible, 
for one born of slaves. The popular speech was 
gradually departing from the form and rule of literary 
language, a language always and increasingly artificial. 
While the learned dialect was yearly becoming more and 
more barbarously pedantic, the colloquial idiom, on the 
other hand, offered a thousand chance-tost gems of racy 
or picturesque expression, rejected or at least ungathered 
by what claimed to be classical Latin. The time was 
coming when neither the pedants nor the people would 
really understand Cicero ; though there were some 
indeed, like this new writer, Apuleius, who, departing 
from the custom of writing in Greek, which had been a 
fashionable affectation among the sprightlier wits since 
the days of Hadrian, had written in the vernacular. 

The literary programme which Flavian had already 
designed for himself would be a work, then, partly con- 
servative or reactionary, in its dealing with the instru- 
ment of the literary art ; partly popular and revolutionary, 
asserting, so to term them, the rights of \}i\Q proletariate 
of speech. More than fifty years before, the younger 
Pliny, himself an effective witness for the delicate power 
of the Latin tongue, had said, " I am one of those who 
admire the ancients, yet I do not, like some others, 
underrate certain instances of genius which our owr; 
times afford. For it is not true that nature, as if weary 
and effete, no longer produces what is admirable." And 
he, Flavian, would prove himself the true master of the 



VI MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 71 

opportunity thus indicated. In his eagerness for a not 
too distant fame, he dreamed over all that, as the young 
Caesar may have dreamed of campaigns. Others might 
brutalise or neglect the native speech, that true " open 
field " for charm and sway over men. He would make 
of it a serious study, weighing the precise power of every 
phrase and word, as though it were precious metal, 
disentanghng the later associations and going back to 
the original and native sense of each, — restoring to full 
significance all its wealth of latent figurative expression, 
reviving or replacing its outworn or tarnished images. 
Latin literature and the Latin tongue were dying of 
routine and languor ; and what was necessary, first of all, 
was to re-establish the natural and direct relationship 
between thought and expression, between the sensation 
and the term, and restore to words their primitive 
power. 

For words, after all, words manipulated with all his 
delicate force, were to be the apparatus of a war for him- 
self. To be forcibly impressed, in the first place ; and 
in the next, to find the means of making visible to others 
that which was vividly apparent, delightful, of lively 
interest to himself, to the exclusion of all that was but 
middling, tame, or only half- true even to him — this 
scrupulousness of literary art actually awoke in Flavian, 
for the first time, a sort of chivalrous conscience. What 
care for style ! what patience of execution ! what research 
for the significant tones of ancient idiom — sona?itia verba 
et aiitiqua ! What stately and regular word-building — 
gravis et decora constructio I He felt the whole meaning 
of the sceptical Pliny's somewhat melancholy advice to 
one of his friends, that he should seek in literature 
deliverance from mortality — iit studiis se liter arum a 
mortalitate vi?idicef. And there was everything in the 
nature and the training of Marius to make him a full 
participator in the hopes of such a new literary school, 



72 ' MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap 

with Flavian for its leader. In the refinements of that 
curious spirit, in its horror of profanities, its fastidious 
sense of a correctness in external form, there was some- 
thing which ministered to the old ritual interest, still 
surviving in him ; as if here indeed were involved a kind 
of sacred service to the mother-tongue. 

Here, then, was the theory of Euphuism, as manifested 
in every age in which the literary conscience has been 
awakened to forgotten duties towards language, towards 
the instrument of expression : in fact it does but modify 
a little the principles of all effective expression at all times. 
'Tis art's function to conceal itself : ars est celare arteni . 
— is a saying, which, exaggerated by inexact quotation, 
has perhaps been oftenest and most confidently quoted by 
those who have had little literary or other art to conceal ; 
and from the very beginning of professional hterature, 
the " labour of the file " — a labour in the case of Plato, 
for instance, or Virgil, like that of the oldest of gold- 
smiths as described by Apuleius, enriching the work by 
far more than the weight of precious metal it removed — 
has always had its function. Sometimes, doubtless, as in 
later examples of it, this Roman Euphuism, determined at 
any cost to attain beauty in writing — Is /caAAos ypa(fi€iv — 
might lapse into its characteristic fopperies or mannerisms, 
into the "defects of its qualities," in truth, not wholly 
unpleasing perhaps, or at least excusable, when looked at 
as but the toys (so Cicero calls them) the strictly con- 
genial and appropriate toys, of an assiduously cultivated 
age, which could not help being polite, critical, self- 
conscious. The mere love of novelty also had, of 
course, its part there : as with the Euphuism of the 
Elizabethan age, and of the modern French romanticists, 
its neologies were the ground of one of the favourite 
charges against it ; though indeed, as regards these 
tricks of taste also, there is nothing new, but a quaint 
family likeness rather, between the Euphuists of successive 



VI MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 73 

ages. Here, as elsewhere, the power of " fashion," as it 
is called, is but .one minor form, slight enough, it may be, 
yet distinctly symptomatic, of that deeper yearning of 
human nature towards ideal perfection, which is a con- 
tinuous force in it; and since in this direction too 
human nature is limited, such fashions must necessarily 
reproduce themselves. Among other resemblances to 
later growths of Euphuism, its archaisms on the one hand, 
and its neologies on the other, the Euphuism of the days 
of Marcus Aurelius had, in the composition of verse, its 
fancy for the refrain. It was a snatch from a popular 
chorus, something he had heard sounding all over the 
town of Pisa one April night, one of the first bland and 
summer-like nights of the year, that Flavian had chosen 
for the refrain of a poem he was then pondering — the 
Pervigiliiun Veneris — the vigil, or " nocturn," of Venus. 
Certain elderly counsellors, filling what may be 
thought a constant part in the little tragi-comedy which 
literature and its votaries are playing in all ages, would 
ask, suspecting some affectation or unreality in that minute 
culture oiform : — Cannot those who have a thing to say, 
say it directly ? Why not be simple and broad, like the 
old wTiters of Greece ? And this challenge had at least 
the effect of setting his thoughts at work on the in- 
tellectual situation as it lay between the children of the 
present and those earliest masters. Certainly, the most 
wonderful, the unique, point, about the Greek genius, in 
literature as in everything else, was the entire absence 
of imitation in its productions. How had the burden of 
precedent, laid upon every artist, increased since then ! 
It was all around one : — that smoothly built world of old 
classical taste, an accomplished fact, with overwhelming 
authority on every detail of the conduct of one's work. 
With no fardel on its own back, yet so imperious towards 
those who came labouring after it, Hellas^ in its early 
freshness, looked as distant from him even then as it 



74 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap, 

does from ourselves. There might seem to be no place 
left for novelty or originality, — place only for a patient, 
an infinite, faultlessness. On this question too Flavian 
passed through a world of curious art-casuistries, of self- 
tormenting, at the threshold of his work. Was poetic 
beauty a thing ever one and the same, a type absolute ; 
or, changing always with the soul of time itself, did it 
depend upon the taste, the peculiar trick of apprehension, 
the fashion, as we say, of each successive age ? Might 
one recover that old, earlier sense of it, that earlier 
manner, in a masterly effort to recall all the complexities 
of the life, moral and intellectual, of the earlier age to 
which it had belonged ? Had there been really bad ages 
in art or literature ? Were all ages, even those earliest, 
adventurous, matutinal days, in themselves equally 
poetical or unpoetical ; and poetry, the literary beauty, 
the poetic ideal, always but a borrowed light upon men's 
actual life ? 

Homer had said — 

01 d' 6t€ dr] \ifiivos TroXv^evdios ivrbs Ikovto, 
'laria fih areCKavro, Oecrav 5' ev vrjC fxeXaiuri . , . 
'E/f 5^ Kal avTol ^aivov eirl pr)yijuut doKdaarjs. 

And how poetic the simple incident seemed, told just 
thus ! Homer was always telling things after this 
manner. And one might think there had been no 
effort in it : that here was but the almost mechanical 
transcript of a time, naturally, intrinsically, poetic, a 
time in which one could hardly have spoken at all with- 
out ideal effect, or the sailors pulled down their boat 
without making a picture in " the great style," against a 
sky charged with marvels. Must not the mere prose of 
an age, itself thus ideal, have counted for more than 
half of Homer's poetry ? Or might the closer student 
discover even here, even in Homer, the really mediatorial 
function of the poet, as between the reader and the 



VI MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 75 

actual matter of his experience ; the poet waiting, so to 
speak, in an age which had felt itself trite and common- 
place enough, on his opportunity for the touch of 
"golden alchemy," or at least for the pleasantly lighted 
side of things themselves ? Might not another, in one's 
own prosaic and used-up time, so uneventful as it had 
been through the long reign of these quiet Antonines, in 
like manner, discover his ideal, by a due waiting upon 
it ? Would not a future generation, looking back upon 
this, under the power of the enchanted-distance fallacy, 
find it ideal to view, in contrast with its own languor — 
the languor that for some reason (concerning which 
Augustine will one day have his view) seemed to haunt 
men always ? Had Homer, even, appeared unreal and 
affected in his poetic flight, to some of the people of his 
own age, as seemed to happen with every new literature 
in turn? In any case, the intellectual conditions of 
early Greece had been — how different from these ! And 
a true literary tact would accept that difference in 
forming the primary conception of the literary function 
at a later time. Perhaps the utmost one could get by con- 
scious effort, in the way of a reaction or return to the con- 
ditions of an earlier and fresher age, would be but ?tovitas, 
artificial artlessness, naivete ; and this quality too might 
have its measure of euphuistic charm, direct and sensible 
enough, though it must count, in comparison with that 
genuine early Greek newness at the beginning, not as 
the freshness of the open fields, but only of a bunch 
of field-flowers in a heated room. 

There was, meantime, all this : — on one side, the old 
pagan culture, for us but a fragment, for him an accom- 
plished yet present fact, still a living, united, organic 
whole, in the entirety of its art, its thought, its religions, 
its sagacious forms of polity, that so weighty authority it 
exercised on every point, being in reality only the measure 
of its charm for every one : on the other side, the actual 



76 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

world in all its eager self-assertion, with Flavian himself, 
in his boundless animation, there, at the centre of the 
situation. From the natural defects, from the pettiness, 
of his euphuism, his assiduous cultivation of manner, he 
was saved by the consciousness that he had a matter to 
present, very real, at least to him. That preoccupation 
of the dilettante with what might seem mere details of 
form, after all, did but serve the purpose of bringing to 
the surface, sincerely and in their integrity, certain strong 
personal intuitions, a certain vision or apprehension of 
things as really being, with important results, thus, rather 
than thus, — intuitions which the artistic or literary faculty 
was called upon to follow, wath the exactness of wax or 
clay, clothing the model within. Flavian too, with his 
fine clear mastery of the practically effective, had early 
laid hold of the principle, as axiomatic in literature : 
that to know when one's self is interested, is the first 
condition of interesting other people. It was a principle, 
the forcible apprehension of which made him jealous and 
fastidious in the selection of his intellectual food ; often 
listless while others read or gazed diligently ; never pre- 
tending to be moved out of mere complaisance to other 
people's emotions : it served to foster in him a very 
.scrupulous literary sincerity with himself. And it was 
this uncompromising demand for a matter, in all art, 
derived immediately from lively personal intuition, this 
constant appeal to individual judgment, which saved his 
euphuism, even at its weakest, from lapsing into mere 
artifice. 

Was the magnificent exordium of Lucretius, addressed 
to the goddess Venus, the work of his earlier manhood, 
and designed originally to open an argument less per- 
sistently sombre than that protest against the whole 
pagan heaven, which actually follows it? It is certainly 
the most typical expression of a mood, still incident 



VI MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 77 

to the young poet, as a thing pecuhar to his youth, 
when he feels the sentimental current setting forcibly 
along his veins, and so much as a matter of purely 
physical excitement, that he can hardly distinguish it 
from the animation of external nature, the upswelling of 
the seed in the earth, and of the sap through the trees. 
Flavian, to whom, again, as to his later euphuistic kins- 
men, old mythology seemed as full of untried, unexpressed 
motives and interest as human life itself, had long been 
occupied with a kind of mystic hymn to the vernal 
principle of life in things ; a composition shaping itself, 
little by little, out of a thousand dim perceptions, into 
singularly definite form (definite and firm as fine-art in 
metal, thought Marius) for which, as I said, he had 
caught his " refrain," from the lips of the young men, 
singing because they could not help it, in the streets of 
Pisa. And as oftenest happens also, with natures of 
genuinely poetic quahty, those piecemeal beginnings 
came suddenly to harmonious completeness among the 
fortunate incidents, the physical heat and light, of one 
singularly happy day. 

It was one of the first hot days of March — "the 
sacred day" — on which, from Pisa, as from many another 
harbour on the Mediterranean, the Ship of his went to 
sea, and every one walked down to the shore-side to 
witness the freighting of the vessel, its launching and 
final abandonment among the waves, as an object really 
devoted to the Great Goddess, that new rival, or "double," 
of ancient Venus, and like her a favourite patroness of 
sailors. On the evening next before, all the world had 
been abroad to view the illumination of the river ; the 
stately lines of building being wreathed with hundreds of 
many-coloured lamps. The young men had poured 
forth their chorus — 

Cras amet qui nunquam amavit, 
Quique amavit cras amet — 



78 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

as they bore their torches through the yielding crowd, 
or rowed their lanterned boats up and down the stream, 
till far into the night, when heavy rain-drops had driven 
the last lingerers home. Morning broke, however, 
smiling and serene ; and the long procession started 
betimes. The river, curving slightly, with the smoothly 
paved streets on either side, between its low marble 
parapet and the fair dwelling-houses, formed the 
main highway of the city ; and the pageant, accom- 
panied throughout by innumerable lanterns and wax 
tapers, took its course up one of these streets, crossing 
the water by a bridge up-stream, and down the other, to 
the haven, every possible standing-place, out of doors 
and within, being crowded with sight-seers, of whom 
Marius was one of the most eager, deeply interested in 
finding the spectacle much as Apuleius had described 
it in his famous book. 

At the head of the procession, the master of cere- 
monies, quietly waving back the assistants, made way 
for a number of women, scattering perfumes. They were 
succeeded by a company of musicians, piping and twang- 
ing, on instruments the strangest Marius had ever be- 
held, the notes of a hymn, narrating the first origin of 
this votive rite to a choir of youths, who marched behind 
them singing it. The tire-women and other personal 
attendants of the great goddess came next, bearing the 
instruments of their ministry, and various articles from 
the sacred wardrobe, wrought of the most precious 
material ; some of them with long ivory combs, plying 
their hands in wild yet graceful concert of movement 
as they went, in devout mimicry of the toilet. Placed 
in their rear were the mirror-bearers of the goddess, 
carrying large mirrors of beaten brass or silver, turned in 
such a way as to reflect to the great body of worshippers 
who followed, the face of the mysterious image, as it 
moved on its way, and their faces to it, as though they 



1 



VI MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 79 

were in fact advancing to meet the heavenly visitor. 
They comprehended a multitude of both sexes and of 
all ages, already initiated into the divine secret, clad in 
fair linen, the females veiled, the males with shining 
tonsures, and every one carrying a sistrum — the richer 
sort of silver, a {q\n very dainty persons of fine gold — 
rattling the reeds, with a noise like the jargon of innumer- 
able birds and insects awakened from torpor and abroad 
in the spring sun. Then, borne upon a kind of platform, 
came the goddess herself, undulating above the heads of 
the multitude as the bearers walked, in mystic robe 
embroidered with the moon and stars, bordered grace- 
fully with a fringe of real fruit and flowers, and with a 
glittering crown upon the head. The train of the pro- 
cession consisted of the priests in long white vestments, 
close from head to foot, distributed into various groups, 
each bearing, exposed aloft, one of the sacred symbols 
of Isis — the corn-fan, the golden asp, the ivory hand of 
equity, and among them the votive ship itself, carved 
and gilt, and adorned bravely with flags flying. Last 
of all walked the high priest ; the people kneeling as he 
passed to kiss his hand, in which were those well- 
remembered roses. 

Marius followed with the rest to the harbour, where 
the mystic ship, lowered from the shoulders of the 
priests, was loaded with as much as it could carry of the 
rich spices and other costly gifts, offered in great pro- 
fusion by the worshippers, and thus, launched at last 
upon the water, left the shore, crossing the harbour-bar 
in the wake of a much stouter vessel than itself with a 
crew of white-robed mariners, whose function it was, at 
the appointed moment, finally to desert it on the open 
sea. 

The remainder of the day was spent by most in 
parties on the water. Flavian and Marius sailed further 
than they had ever done before to a wild spot on the 



8o MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap 

bay, the traditional site of a little Greek colony, which, 
having had its eager, stirring life at the time when 
Etruria was still a power in Italy, had perished in the 
age of tlie civil wars. In the absolute transparency of 
the air on this gracious day, an infinitude of detail from 
sea and shore reached the eye with sparkling clearness, 
as the two lads sped rapidly over the waves — Flavian at 
work suddenly, from time to time, with his tablets. 
They reached land at last. The coral-fishers had spread 
their nets on the sands, with a tumble-down of quaint, 
many-hued treasures, below a little shrine of Venus, 
fluttering and gay with the scarves and napkins and 
gilded shells which these people had offered to the 
image. Flavian and Marius sat down under the shadow 
of a mass of gray rock or ruin, where the sea-gate of the 
Greek town had been, and talked of life in those old 
Greek colonies. Of this place, all that remained, besides 
those rude stones, was — a handful of silver coins, each 
with a head of pure and archaic beauty, though a little 
cruel perhaps, supposed to represent the Siren Ligeia, 
whose tomb was formerly shown here — only these, and 
an ancient song, the very strain which Flavian had 
recovered in those last months. They were records 
which spoke, certainly, of the charm of life within those 
walls. How strong must have been the tide of men's 
existence in that httle republican town, so small that 
this circle of gray stones, of service now only by the 
moisture they gathered for the blue-flowering gentians 
among them, had been the Hne of its rampart ! An 
epitome of all that was liveliest, most animated and 
adventurous, in the old Greek people of which it was an 
offshoot, it had enhanced the effect of these gifts by con- 
centration within narrow limits. The band of " devoted 
youth," Upa v€0T7;s — of the younger brothers, devoted to 
the gods and whatever luck the gods might afibrd, 
because there was no room for them at home — went 



VI MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 8i 

forth, bearing the sacred flanie from the mother-hearth ; 
itself a flame, of power to consume the whole material 
of existence in clear light and heat, with no smouldering 
residue. The life of those vanished townsmen, so 
brilliant and revolutionary, applying so abundantly the 
personal qualities which alone just then Marius seemed 
to value, associated itself with the actual figure of his 
companion, standing there before him, his face enthusi- 
astic with the sudden thought of all that ; and struck 
him vividly as precisely the fitting opportunity for a 
nature like his, so hungry for control, for ascendency 
over men. 

Marius noticed also, however, as high spirits flagged 
at last, on the way home through the heavy dew of the 
evening, more than physical fatigue in Flavian, who 
seemed to find no refreshment in the coolness. There 
had been something feverish, perhaps, and like the 
beginning of sickness, about his almost forced gaiety, in 
this sudden spasm of spring ; and by the evening of the 
next day he was lying with a burning spot on his forehead, 
stricken, as was thought from the first, by the terrible 
new disease,, 



CHAPTER Vn 

A PAGAN END 

For the fantastical colleague of the philosophic emperoi 
Marcus Aurelius, returning in triumph from the East, 
had brought in his train, among the enemies of Rome, 
one by no means a captive. People actually sickened 
at a sudden touch of the unsuspected foe, as they watched 
in dense crowds the pathetic or grotesque imagery of 
failure or success in the triumphal procession. And, as 
usual, the plague brought with it a power to develop all 
pre-existent germs of superstition. It was by dishonour 
done to Apollo himself, said popular rumour — to Apollo, 
the old titular divinity of pestilence, that the poisonous 
thing had come abroad. Pent up in a golden coffer 
consecrated to the god, it had escaped in the sacrilegious 
plundering of his temple at Seleucia by the soldiers of 
Lucius Varus, after a traitorous surprise of that town and 
a cruel massacre. Certainly there was something which 
baffled all imaginable precautions and all medical science, 
in the suddenness with which the disease broke out 
simultaneously, here and there, among both soldiers and 
citizens, even in places far remote from the main line of 
its march in the rear of the victorious army. It 
seemed to have invaded the whole empire, and some 
have even thought that, in a mitigated form, it per- 
manently remained there. In Rome itself many thou 



CHAP. VII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 83 

sands perished ; and old authorities tell of farmsteads, 
whole towns, and even entire neighbourhoods, which 
from that time continued without inhabitants and lapsed 
into wildness or ruin. 

Flavian lay at the open window of his lodging, with 
a fiery pang in the brain, fancying no covering thin or 
light enough to be apphed to his body. His head being 
relieved after a while, there was distress at the chest. 
It was but the fatal course of the strange new sickness, 
under many disguises ; travelling from the brain to the 
feet, like a material resident, weakening one after another 
of the organic centres ; often, when it did not kill, 
depositing various degrees of lifelong infirmity in this 
member or that ; and after such descent, returning 
upwards again, now as a mortal coldness, leaving the 
entrenchments of the fortress of life overturned, one by 
one, behind it. 

Flavian lay there, with the enemy at his breast now 
in a painful cough, but relieved from that burning fever 
in the head, amid the rich-scented flowers — rare Paestum 
roses, and the like — procured by Marius for his solace, 
in a fancied convalescence ; and would, at intervals, 
return to labour at his verses, with a great eagerness to 
complete and transcribe the work, while Marius sat and 
wrote at his dictation, one of the latest but not the 
poorest specimens of genuine Latin poetry. 

It was in fact a kind of nuptial hymn, which, taking 
its start from the thought of nature as the universal 
mother, celebrated the preliminary pairing and mating 
together of all fresh things, in the hot and genial spring- 
time — the immemorial nuptials of the soul of spring itself 
and the brown earth ; and was full of a delighted, mystic 
sense of what passed between them in that fantastic 
marriage. That mystic burden was relieved, at intervals, 
by the familiar playfulness of the Latin verse-writer in 
dealing with mythology, which, though coming at so late 



84 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

a day, had still a wonderful freshness in its old age.— 
'^ Amor h2is put his weapons by and will keep holiday 
He was bidden go without apparel, that none might be 
wounded by his bow and arrows. But take care ! In 
truth he is none the less armed than usual, though he 
be all unclad." 

In the expression oi all this Flavian seemed, while 
making it his chief aim to retain the opulent, many- 
syllabled vocabulary of the Latin genius, at some points 
even to have advanced beyond it, in anticipation of 
wholly new laws of taste as regards sound, a new range 
of sound itself. The peculiar resultant note, associating 
itself with certain other experiences of his, was to Marius 
like the foretaste of an entirely novel world of poetic 
beauty to come. Flavian bad caught, indeed, something 
of the rhyming cadence, the sonorous organ-music of the 
medieval Latin, and therewithal something of its unction 
and mysticity of spirit. There was in his work, along 
with the last splendour of the classical language, a touch, 
almost prophetic, of that transformed life it was to have 
in the rhyming middle age, just about to dawn. The 
impression thus forced upon Marius connected itself 
with a feeling, the exact inverse of that, known to every 
one, which seems to say, Ybu have been just here^ just 
thus, before 1 — a feeling, in his case, not reminiscent but 
prescient of the future, which passed over him afterwards 
many times, as he came across certain places and people. 
It was as if he detected there the process of actual 
change to a wholly undreamed-of and renewed condition 
of human body and soul : as if he saw the heavy yet 
decrepit old Roman architecture about him, rebuilding 
on an intrinsically better pattern. — Could it have been 
actually on. a new musical instrument that Flavian had 
first heard the novel accents of his verse? And still 
Marius noticed there, amid all its richness of expression 
and imagery, that firmness of outline he had always 



VII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 85 

relished so much in the composition of Flavian. Yes ! 
a firmness like that of some master of noble metal-work, 
manipulating tenacious bronze or gold. Even now that 
haunting refrain, with its tinpro?nptu variations, from the 
throats of those strong young men, came floating through 
the window. 

Cras amet qui nunquam amavit, 
Quique amavit cras amet ! 

— repeated Flavian, tremulously, dictating yet one stanza 
more. 

What he was losing, his freehold of a soul and body 
so fortunately endowed, the mere liberty of life above- 
ground, " those sunny mornings in the cornfields by the 
sea," as he recollected them one day, when the window 
was thrown open upon the early freshness — his sense of 
all this, was from the first singularly near and distinct, 
yet rather as of something he was but debarred the use 
of for a time than finally bidding farewell to. That was 
while he was still with no very grave misgivings as to 
the issue of his sickness, and felt the sources of life still 
springing essentially unadulterate within him. From 
time to time, indeed, Marius, labouring eagerly at the 
poem from his dictation, was haunted by a feeling of the 
triviality of such work just then. The recurrent sense 
of some obscure danger beyond the mere danger of 
death, vaguer than that and by so much the more terrible, 
like the menace of some shadowy adversary in the dark 
with whose mode of attack they had no acquaintance, 
disturbed him now and again through those hours of 
excited attention to his manuscript, and to the purely 
physical wants of Flavian. Still, during these three days 
there was much hope and cheerfulness, and even jesting. 
Half-consciously Marius tried to prolong one or another 
relieving circumstance of the day, the preparations for 
rest and morning refreshment, for instance ; sadly making 



86 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap 

the most of the Httle luxury of this or that, with some- 
thing of the feigned cheer of the mother who sets her 
last morsels before her famished child as for a feast, but 
really that he " may eat it and die." 

On the afternoon of the seventh day he allowed 
Marius finally to put aside the unfinished manuscript. 
For the enemy, leaving the chest quiet at length though 
much exhausted, had made itself felt with full power 
again in a painful vomiting, which seemed to shake his 
body asunder, with great consequent prostration. From 
that time the distress increased rapidly downwards. 
Omnia turn vero vital claustra lababant ; and soon the 
cold was mounting with sure pace from the dead feet 
to the head. 

And now Marius began more than to suspect what 
the issue must be, and henceforward could but watch 
with a sort of agonised fascination the rapid but system- 
atic work of the destroyer, faintly relieving a little the 
mere accidents of the sharper forms of suffering. 
Flavian himself appeared, in full consciousness at last — 
in clear-sighted, deliberate estimate of the actual crisis — 
to be doing battle with his adversary. His mind 
surveyed, with great distinctness, the various suggested 
modes of rehef. He must without fail get better, he 
would fancy, might he be removed to a certain place on 
the hills where as a child he had once recovered from 
sickness, but found that he could scarcely raise his head 
from the pillow without giddiness. As if now surely 
foreseeing the end, he would set himself, with an eager 
effort, and with that eager and angry look, which is noted 
as one of the premonitions of death in this disease, to 
fashion out, without formal dictation, still a few more 
broken verses of his unfinished work, in hard-set de- 
termination, defiant of pain, to arrest this or that little 
drop at least from the river of sensuous imagery rushing 
so quickly past him 



VII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 87 

But at length delirium — symptom that the work of the 
plague was done, and the last resort of life yielding to 
the enemy — broke the coherent order of words and 
thoughts ; and Marius, intent on the coming agony, found 
his best hope in the increasing dimness of the patient's 
mind. In intervals of clearer consciousness the visible 
signs of cold, of sorrow and desolation, were very painful. 
No longer battling with the disease, he seemed as it 
were to place himself at the disposal of the victorious 
foe, dying passively, like some dumb creature, in hopeless 
acquiescence at last. /That old, half-pleading petulance, 
unamiable, yet, as it might seem, only needing conditions 
of life a little happier than they had actually been, to 
become refinement of affection, a delicate grace in its 
demand on the sympathy of others, had changed in 
those moments of full intelligence to a cHnging and 
tremulous gentleness, as he lay — " on the very threshold 
of death " — with a sharply contracted hand in the hand 
of Marius, to his almost surprised joy, winning him now 
to an absolutely self-forgetful devotion. There was a 
new sort of pleading in the misty eyes, just because they 
took such unsteady note of him, which made Marius feel 
as if guilty ; anticipating thus a form of self-reproach with 
which even the tenderest ministrant may be sometimes 
surprised, when, at death, affectionate labour suddenly 
ceasing leaves room for the suspicion of some failure of 
love perhaps, at one or another minute point in it. 
Marius almost longed to take his share in the suffering, 
that he might understand so the better how to relieve it. 

It seemed that the light of the lamp distressed the 
patient, and Marius extinguished it. The thunder which 
had sounded all day among the hills, with a heat not un- 
welcome to Flavian, had given way at nightfall to steady 
rain ; and in the darkness Marius lay down beside him, 
faintly shivering now in the sudden cold, to lend him 
his own warmth, undeterred by the fear of contagion 



88 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap 

which had kept other people from passing near the house. 
At length about daybreak he perceived that the last 
effort had come with a revival of mental clearness, as 
Marius understood by the contact, light as it was, in 
recognition of him there. " Is it a comfort," he 
whispered then, " that I shall often come and weep 
over you ? " — " Not unless I be aware, and hear you 
weeping ! " 

The sun shone out on the people going to w^ork for 
a long hot day, and Marius was standing by the dead, 
watching, with deliberate purpose to fix in his memory 
every detail, that he might have this picture in reserve, 
should any hour of forgetfulness hereafter come to him 
with the temptation to feel completely happy again. A 
feeling of outrage, of resentment against nature itself, 
mingled with an agony of pity, as he noted on the now 
placid features a certain look of humility, almost abject, 
like the expression of a smitten child or animal, as of 
one, fallen at last, after bewildering struggle, wholly 
under the power of a merciless adversary. From mere 
tenderness of soul he would not forget one circumstance 
in all that ; as a man might piously stamp on his memory 
the death-scene of a brother wrongfully condemned to 
die, against a time that may come. 

The fear of the corpse, which surprised him in his 
effort to watch by it through the darkness, was a hint of 
his own failing strength, just in time. The first night 
after the washing of the body, he bore stoutly enough 
the tax which affection seemed to demand, throwing the 
incense from time to time on the little altar placed 
beside the bier. It was the recurrence of the thing — 
that unchanged outline below the coverlet, amid a silence 
in which the faintest rustle seemed to speak — that finally 
overcame his determination. Surely, here, in this aliena- 
tion, this sense of distance between them, which had come 
over him before though in minor degree when the mind of 



vu MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 89 

Flavian had wandered in his sickness, was another of the 
pains of death. Yet he was able to make all due pre- 
parations, and go through the ceremonies, shortened a 
httle because of the infection, when, on a cloudless 
evening, the funeral procession went forth ; himself, 
the flames of the pyre having done their work, carrying 
away the urn of the deceased, in the folds of his toga, 
to its last resting-place in the cemetery beside the high- 
way, and so turning home to sleep in his own desolate 
lodging. 

Quis desiderio sit pudor aut. modus 
Tam carl capitis? — 

What thought of others' thoughts about one could 
there be with the regret for " so dear a head " fresh at 
one's hesrt? 



PART THE SECOND 



CHAPTER VIII 



ANIMULA VAGULA 



Animula, vagula, blandula 
liospes comesque corporis, 
Quae nunc abibis in loca ? 
Pallidula, rigida, nudula. 

The Emperor Hadrian to his Soul. 

Flavian was no more. The little marble chest with its 
dust and tears lay cold among the faded flowers. For 
most people the actual spectacle of death brings out into 
greater reality, at least for the imagination, whatever 
confidence they may entertain of the soul's survival in 
another life. To Marius, greatly agitated by that event, 
the earthly end of Flavian came like a final revelation of 
nothing less than the soul's extinction. Flavian had 
gone out as utterly as the fire among those still beloved 
ashes. Even that wistful suspense of judgment ex- 
pressed by the dying Hadrian, regarding further stages 
of being still possible for the soul in some dim journey 
hence, seemed wholly untenable, and, with it, almost all 
that remained of the religion of his childhood. Future 
extinction seemed just then to be what the unforced 
witness of his own nature pointed to. On the other 
hand, there came a novel curiosity as to what the various 
schools of ancient philosophy had had to say concerning 
that strange, fluttering creature ; and that curiosity 
impelled him to certain severe studies, in which his 



94 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chav. 

earlier religious conscience seemed still to survive, 
as a principle of hieratic scrupulousness or integrity 
of thought, regarding this new service to intellectual 
light. 

At this time, by his poetic and inward temper, he 
might have fallen a prey to the enervating mysticism, 
then in wait for ardent souls in many a melodramatic 
revival of old religion or theosophy. From all this, 
fascinating as it might actually be to one side of his 
character, he was kept by a genuine virility there, effective 
in him, among other results, as a hatred of what was 
theatrical, and the instinctive recognition that in vigorous 
intelligence, after all, divinity was most likely to be 
found a resident. With this was connected the feeling, 
increasing with his advance to manhood, of a poetic 
beauty in mere clearness of thought, the actually 
aesthetic charm of a cold austerity of mind; as if the 
kinship of that to the clearness of physical light were 
something more than a figure of speech. Of all those 
various religious fantasies, as so many forms of enthusiasm, 
he could well appreciate the picturesque : that was 
made easy by his natural Epicureanism, already prompt- 
ing him /to conceive of himself as but the passive 
spectator of the world around him./ But it was to the 
severer reasoning, of which such matters as Epicurean 
theory are born, that, in effect, he now betook himself 
Instinctively suspicious of those mechanical arcana^ those 
pretended " secrets unveiled " of the professional mystic, 
which really bring great and little souls to one level, for 
Marius the only possible dilemma lay between that old, 
ancestral Roman religion, now become so incredible to 
him, and the honest action of his own untroubled, 
unassisted intelligence. Even the Arcana Celestia of 
Platonism — what the sons of Plato had had to say regard- 
ing the essential indifference of pure soul to its bodily house 
and merely occasional dwelling-place — seemed to him, 



VIII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 95 

while his heart was there in the urn with the material 
ashes of Flavian, or still lingering in memory over his 
last agony, wholly inhuman or morose, as tending to 
alleviate his resentment at nature's wrong. It was to the 
sentiment of the body, and the affections it defined — 
the flesh, of whose force and colour that wandering 
Platonic soul was but so frail a residue or abstract — 
he must cling. The various pathetic traits of the beloved, 
suffering, perished body of Flavian, so deeply pondered, 
had made him a materialist, but with something of the 
temper of a devotee. 

As a consequence it might have seemed at first that 
his care for poetry had passed away, to be replaced by 
the literature of thought. His much-pondered manuscript 
verses were laid aside ; and what happened now to one, 
who was certainly to be something of a poet from first 
to last, looked at the moment like a change from poetry 
to prose. He came of age about this time, his own 
master though with beardless face ; and at eighteen, an 
age at which, then as now, many youths of capacity, who 
fancied themselves poets, secluded themselves from 
others chiefly in affectation and vague dreaming, he 
secluded himself indeed from others, but in a severe 
intellectual meditation, that salt of poetry, without which 
all the more serious charm is lacking to the imaginative 
world. I Still with something of the old religious earnest- 
ness of his childhood, he set himself — Sich im Denken 
zu orientiren — to determine his bearings, as by compass, 
in the world of thought — to get that precise acquaintance 
with the creative intelligence itself, its structure and 
capacities, its relation to other parts of himself and to 
other things, without which, certainly, no poetry can be 
masterly. Like a young man rich in this world's goods com- 
ing of age, he must go into affairs, and ascertain his outlook. 
There must be no disguises. An exact estimate of 
realities, as towards himself, he must have — a delicately 



96 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

measured gradation of certainty in things — from the 
distant, haunted horizon of mere surmise or imagination, 
to the actual feeling of sorrow in his heart, as he reclined 
one morning, alone instead of in pleasant company, to 
ponder the hard sayings of an imperfect old Greek 
manuscript, unrolled beside him. His former gay 
companions, meeting him in the streets of the old 
Italian town, and noting the graver lines coming into 
the face of the sombre but enthusiastic student of 
intellectual structure, who could hold his own so well in 
the society of accomplished older men, were half afraid 
of him, though proud to have him of their company. 
Why this reserve ? — they asked, concerning the orderly, 
self-possessed youth, whose speech and carriage seemed 
so carefully measured, who was surely no poet like the 
rapt, dishevelled Lupus. Was he secretly in love, 
perhaps, whose toga was so daintily folded, and who 
was always as fresh as the flowers he wore ; or bent on 
his own Une of ambition ; or even on riches ? 

Marius, meantime, was reading freely, in early 
morning for the most part, those writers chiefly who 
had made it their business to know what might be 
thought concerning that strange, enigmatic, personal 
essence, which had seemed to go out altogether, along 
with the funeral fires. And the old Greek who more 
than any other was now giving form to his thoughts was 
a very hard master. From Epicurus, from the thunder 
and lightning of Lucretius — like thunder and lightning 
some distance off, one might recline to enjoy, in a 
garden of roses — he had gone back to the writer who 
was in a certain sense the teacher of both, Heraclitus 
of Ionia. His difficult book " Concerning Nature "■ 
was even then rare, for people had long since satisfied 
themselves by the quotation of certain brilliant, isolated, 
oracles only, out of what was at best a taxing kind 
of lore. But the difficulty of the early Greek prose 






VI 1 1 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 97 

did but spur the curiosity of Marius ; the writer, tlie 
superior clearness of whose intellectual view had so 
sequestered him from other men, who had had so little 
joy of that superiority, being avowedly exacting as to the 
amount of devout attention he required from the student. 
"The many," he said, always thus emphasising the 
difference between the many and the few, are " like 
people heavy with wine," "led by children," "knowing 
not whither they go ; " and yet, " much learning doth not 
make wise ; " and again, " the ass, after all, would have 
his thistles rather than fine gold." 

HeracHtus, indeed, had not under-rated the difficulty 
for " the many " of the paradox with which his doctrine 
begins, and the due reception of which must involve a 
denial of habitual impressions, as the necessary first step 
in the way of truth. His philosophy had been developed 
in conscious, outspoken opposition to the current mode 
of thought, as a matter requiring some exceptional 
loyalty to pure reason and its "dry light." Men are 
subject to an illusion, he protests, regarding matters 
apparent to sense. What the uncorrected sense gives 
was a false impression of permanence or fixity in things, 
which have really changed their nature in the very 
moment in which we see and touch them. And the 
radical flaw in the current mode of thinking would 
lie herein : that, reflecting this false or uncorrected 
sensation, it attributes to the phenomena of experience 
a durability which does not really belong to them. 
Imaging forth from those fluid impressions a world 
of firmly outlined objects, it leads one to regard as a 
thing stark and dead what is in reality full of animation, 
of vigour, of the fire of life — that eternal process of 
nature, of which at a later time Goethe spoke as the 
" Living Garment," whereby God is seen of us, ever in 
weaving at the " Loom of Time." 

And the appeal which the old Greek thinker made 

H 



98 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

was, in the first instance, from confused to unconfused 
sensation ; with a sort of prophetic seriousness, a great 
claim and assumption, such as we may understand, if 
we anticipate in this preliminary scepticism the ulterior 
scope of his speculation, according to which the uni- 
versal movement of all natural things is but one particular 
stage, or measure, of that ceaseless activity wherein the 
divine reason consists. The one true being — that 
constant subject of all early thought — it was his merit 
to have conceived, not as sterile and stagnant inaction, 
but as a perpetual energy, from the restless stream of 
which, at certain points, some elements detach them- 
selves, and harden into non-entity and death, corre- 
sponding, as outward objects, to man's inward con- 
dition of ignorance : that is, to the slowness of his 
faculties. It is with this paradox of a subtle, perpetual 
change in all visible things, that the high speculation of 
Heraclitus begins. Hence the scorn he expresses for 
anything like a careless, half-conscious, " use-and-wont " 
reception of our experience, which took so strong a 
hold on men's memories ! Hence those many precepts 
towards a strenuous self-consciousness in all we think and 
do, that loyalty to cool and candid reason, which makes 
strict attentiveness of mind a kind of religious duty and 
service. 

The negative doctrine, then, that the objects of our 
ordinary experience, fixed as they seem, are really in 
perpetual change, had been, as originally conceived, but 
the preliminary step towards a large positive system of 
almost religious philosophy. Then as now, the illumin- 
ated philosophic mind might apprehend, in what seemed 
a mass of lifeless matter, the movement of that universal 
life, in which things, and men's impressions of them, 
were ever "coming to be," alternately consumed and 
renewed. That continual change, to be discovered by 
the attentive understanding where common opinion 



1 



VIII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 99 

found fixed objects, was but the indicator of a subtler 
but all-pervading motion — the sleepless, ever-sustained, 
inexhaustible energy of the divine reason itself, proceed- 
ing always by its own rhythmical logic, and lending to all 
mind and matter, in turn, what life they had. In this 
"perpetual flux" of things and of souls, there was, as 
Heraclitus conceived, a continuance, if not of their 
material or spiritual elements, yet of orderly intelligible 
relationships, like the harmony of musical notes, wrought 
out in and through the series of their mutations — 
ordinances of the divine reason, maintained throughout 
the changes of the phenomenal world ; and this 
harmony in their mutation and opposition, was, after all, 
a principle of sanity, of reality, there. But it happened, 
that, of all this, the first, merely sceptical or negative 
step, that easiest step on the threshold, had alone 
remained in general memory; and the " doctrine of 
motion " seemed to those who had felt its seduction to 
make all fixed knowledge impossible. The swift passage 
of things, the still swifter passage of those modes of our 
conscious being which seemed to reflect them, might 
indeed be the burning of the divine fire : but what was 
ascertained was that they did pass away hke a devouring 
flame, or like the race of water in the mid-stream — too 
swiftly for any real knowledge of them to be attainable. 
Heracliteanism had grown to be almost identical with 
the famous doctrine of the sophist Protagoras, that the 
momentary, sensible apprehension of the individual was 
the only standard of what is or is not, and each one the 
measure of all things to himself. The impressive name 
of Heraclitus had become but an authority for a 
philosophy of the despair of knowledge. 

And as it had been with his original followers in 
Greece, so it happened now with the later Roman 
disciple. He, too, paused at the apprehension of that 
constant motion of things — the drift of flowers, of little 

I. -f C. 



loo MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap 

or great souls, of ambitious systems, in the stream around 
him, the first source, the uhimate issue, of which, in 
regions out of sight, must count with him as but a dim 
problem. The bold mental flight of the old Greek 
master from the fleeting, competing objects of experience 
to that one universal life, in which the whole sphere 
of physical change might be reckoned as but a single 
pulsation, remained by him as hypothesis only — the 
hypothesis he actually preferred, as in itself most 
credible, however scantily realisable even by the imagina- 
tion — yet still as but one unverified hypothesis, among 
many others, concerning the first principle of things. 
He might reserve it as a fine, high, visionary considera- 
tion, very remote upon the intellectual ladder, just at 
the point, indeed, where that ladder seemed to pass into 
the clouds, but for which there was certainly no time 
left just now by his eager interest in the real objects so 
close to him, on the lowlier earthy steps nearest the ground. 
And those childish days of reverie, when he played at 
priests, played in many another day-dream, working his 
way from the actual present, as far as he might, with a 
delightful sense of escape in replacing the outer world 
of other people by an inward world as himself really 
cared to have it, had made him a kind of " idealist." 
He was become aware of the possibility of a large 
dissidence between an inward and somewhat exclusive 
world of vivid personal apprehension, and the un- 
improved, unheightened reality of the life of those about 
him. As a consequence, he was ready now to concede, 
somewhat more easily than others, the first point of his 
new lesson, /that the individual is to himself the 
measure of all things, and to rely on the exclusive 
certainty to himself of his own impressions. To move 
afterwards in that outer world of other people, as though 
taking it at their estimate, would be possible henceforth 
only as a kind of irony. And as with the Vicain 

I 



viii MARIUS THE EPICUREAN loi 

Savoyard^ after reflecting on the variations of philosophy, 
" the first fruit he drew from that reflection was the 
lesson of a limitation of his researches to what 
immediately interested him ; to rest peacefully in a 
profound ignorance as to all beside ; to disquiet himself 
only concerning those things which it was of import for 
him to know." At least he would entertain no 
theory of conduct which did not allow its due weight to 
this primary element of incertitude or negation, in the 
conditions of man's life. 

Just here he joined company, retracing in his 
individual mental pilgrimage the historic order of human 
thought, with another wayfarer on the journey, another 
ancient Greek master, the founder of the Cyrenaic 
philosophy, whose weighty traditional utterances (for he 
had left no writing) served in turn to give effective out- 
line to the contemplations of Marius. There was 
something in the doctrine itself congruous with the 
place wherein it had its birth ; and for a time Marius 
lived much, mentally, in the brilliant Greek colony 
which had given a dubious name to the philosophy of 
pleasure. It hung, for his fancy, between the mountains 
and the sea, among richer than Italian gardens, on a 
certain breezy table-land projecting from the African 
coast, some hundreds of miles southward from Greece. 
There, in a delightful climate, with something of trans- 
alpine temperance amid its luxury, and withal in an 
inward atmosphere of temperance which did but further 
enhance the brilliancy of human life, the school of Gyrene 
had maintained itself as almost one with the family of its 
founder ; certainly as nothing coarse or unclean, and 
under the influence of accomplished women. 

Aristippus of Gyrene too had left off in suspense of 
judgment as to what might really lie behind — flam- 
maiitia fncEnia miindi : the flaming ramparts of the world. 
Those strange, bold, sceptical surmises, which had 



102 MAKIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

haunted the minds of the first Greek enquirers as merely 
abstract doubt, which had been present to tlie mind of 
Heraclitus as one element only in a system of abstract 
philosophy, became with Aristippus a very subtly 
practical worldly-wisdom. The difference between him 
and those obscure earlier thinkers is almost like that 
between an ancient thinker generally, and a modern man 
of the world : it was the difference between the mystic 
in his cell, or the prophet in the desert, and the expert, 
cosmopolitan, administrator of his dark sayings, translat- 
ing the abstract thoughts of the master into terms, first 
of all, of seiitiinent. It has been sometimes seen, in the 
history of the human mind, that when thus translated 
into terms of sentiment — of sentiment, as lying already 
half-way towards practice — the abstract ideas of meta- 
physics for the first time reveal their true significance. / 
The metaphysical principle, in itself, as it were, without 
hands or feet, becomes impressive, fascinating, of effect, 
when translated into a precept as to how it were best to 
feel and act ; in other words, under its sentimental or 
ethical equivalent. The leading idea of the great master 
of Gyrene, his theory that things are but shadows, and 
that we, even as they, never continue in one stay, might 
indeed have taken effect as a languid, enervating, 
consumptive nihilism, as a precept of " renunciation," 
which would touch and handle and busy itself with 
nothing. But in the reception of metaphysical for- 
mulce, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior 
result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human 
nature into which they fall — the company they find 
already present there, on their admission into the 
house of thought ; there being at least so much truth 
as this involves in the theological maxim, that the 
reception of this or that speculative conclusion is 
really a matter of will. The persuasion that all is 
vanity, with this happily constituted Greek, who had 



VIII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 103 

been a genuine disciple of Socrates and reflected, 
presumably, something of his blitheness in the face of 
the world, his happy way of taking all chances, 
generated neither frivolity nor sourness, but induced, 
rather, an impression, just serious enough, of the call 
upon men's attention of the crisis in which they find 
themselves. It became the stimulus towards every kind 
of activity, and prompted a perpetual, inextinguishable 
thirst after experience. 

With Marius, then, the influence of the philosopher 
of pleasure depended on this, that in him an abstract 
doctrine, originally somewhat acrid, had fallen upon a 
rich and genial nature, well fitted to transform it into a 
theory of practice, of considerable stimulative power 
towards a fair life. What Marius saw in him was the 
spectacle of one of the happiest temperaments coming, 
.50 to speak, to an understanding with the most depressing 
of theories ; accepting the results of a metaphysical 
system which seemed to concentrate into itself all the 
weakening trains of thought in earher Greek speculation, 
and making the best of it ; turning its hard, bare truths, 
with wonderful tact, into precepts of grace, and delicate 
wisdom, and a delicate sense of honour. Given the 
hardest terms, supposing our days are indeed but a 
shadow, even so, we may well adorn and beautify, in 
scrupulous self-respect, our souls, and whatever our souls 
touch upon — these wonderful bodies, these material 
dwelling-places through which the shadows pass together 
for awhile, the very raiment we wear, our very pastimes and 
the intercourse of society. The most discerning judges 
saw in him something like the graceful " humanities " of 
the later Roman, and our modern "culture,"as it is termed; 
while Horace recalled his sayings as expressing best his 
own consummate amenity in the reception of life. 

In this way, for Marius, under the guidance of that 
old master of decorous living, those eternal doubts as to 



I04 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

the criteria of truth reduced themselves to a scepticism 
almost drily practical, a scepticism which developed the 
opposition between things as they are and our impressions 
and thoughts concerning them — the possibility, if an 
outward world does really exist, of some faultiness in 
our apprehension of it — the doctrine, in short, of what 
is termed " the subjectivity of knowledge." That is a 
consideration, indeed, which lies as an element of 
weakness, like some admitted fault or flaw, at the very 
foundation of every philosophical account of the universe ; 
which confronts all philosophies at their starting, but 
with which none have really dealt conclusively, some 
perhaps not quite sincerely ; which those who are not 
philosophers dissipate by " common," but unphilosophical, 
sense, or by religious faith. The peculiar strength ol 
Marius was, to have apprehended this weakness on the 
threshold of human knowledge, in the whole range of its 
consequences. Our knowledge is limited to what we 
feel, he reflected : we need no proof that we feel. But 
can we be sure that things are at all like our feeflngs ? 
Mere peculiarities in the instruments of our cognition, 
like the little knots and waves on the surface of a mirror, 
may distort the matter they seem but to represent. Of 
other people we cannot truly know even the feelings, nor 
how far they would indicate the same modifications, 
each one of a personality really unique, in using the 
same terms as ourselves ; that " common experience," 
which is sometimes proposed as a satisfactory basis of 
certainty, being after all only a fixity of language. But 
our own impressions ! — The light and heat of that blue 
veil over our heads, the heavens spread out, perhaps not 
like a curtain over anything ! — How reassuring, after 
so long a debate about the rival criteria of truth, to fall 
back upon direct sensation, to limit one's aspirations after 
knowledge to that ! In an age still materially so brilliant, 
so expert in the artistic handling of material things, with 



VIII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 105 

sensible capacities still in undiminished vigour, with the 
whole world of classic art and poetry outspread before 
it, and where there was more than eye or ear could well 
take in — how natural the determination to rely exclusively 
upon the phenomena of the senses, which certainly never 
deceive us about themselves, about which alone we can 
never deceive ourselves ! 

And so the abstract apprehension that the little point 
of this present moment alone really is, between a past 
which has just ceased to be and a future which may 
never come, became practical with Marius, under the 
form of a resolve, as far as possible, to exclude regret 
and desire, and yield himself to the improvement of the 
present with an absolutely disengaged mind. America 
is here a7id now — here^ or noivhere : as Wilhelm Meister 
finds out one day, just not too late, after so long looking 
vaguely across the ocean for the opportunity of the 
development of his capacities. It was as if, recognising 
in perpetual motion the law of nature, Marius identified 
his own way of life cordially with it, " throwing himself 
into the stream," so to speak. He too must maintain a 
harmony with that soul of motion in things, by constantly 
renewed mobility of character. 

Omnis Aristippum decuit color et status et res. — 

Thus Horace had summed up that perfect mannei 
in the reception of life attained by his old Cyrenaic 
master ; and the first practical consequence of the 
metaphysic which lay behind that perfect manner, had 
been a strict limitation, almost the renunciation, of 
metaphysical enquiry itself. Metaphysic — that art, as it 
has so often proved, in the words of Michelet, de 
s'egarer avec tnethode, of bewildering oneself methodically : 
— one must spend little time upon that ! In the school 
of Cyrene, great as was its mental incisiveness, logical 
and physical speculation, theoretic interests generally, 



io6 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

had been valued only so far as they served to give a 
groundwork, an intellectual justification, to that exclusive 
concern with practical ethics which was a note of the 
Cyrenaic philosophy. How earnest and enthusiastic, 
how true to itself, under how many varieties of character, 
had been the effort of the Greeks after Theory — ■ 
Theoria — that vision of a wholly reasonable world, which, 
according to the greatest of them, literally makes man 
like God : how loyally they had still persisted in the 
quest after that, in spite of how many disappointments ! 
In the Gospel of Saint John, perhaps, some of them 
might have found the kind of vision they were seeking 
for ; but not in " doubtful disputations " concerning 
" being " and " not-being," knowledge and appearance. 
Men's minds, even young men's minds, at that late day, 
might well seem oppressed by the weariness of systems 
which had so far outrun positive knowledge ; and in the 
mind of Marius, as in that old school of Gyrene, this 
sense of eiinui, combined with appetites so youthfully 
vigorous, brought about reaction, a sort of suicide 
(instances of the like have been seen since) by which a 
great metaphysical acumen was devoted to the function 
of proving metaphysical speculation impossible, or useless. 
Abstract theory was to be valued only just so far as it 
might serve to clear the tablet of the mind from 
suppositions no more than half realisable, or wholly 
visionary, leaving it in flawless evenness of surface to 
the impressions of an experience, concrete and direct. 

To be absolutely virgin towards such experience, by 
ridding ourselves of such abstractions as are but the 
ghosts of bygone impressions— to be rid of the notions 
we have made for ourselves, and that so often only mis- 
represent the experience of which they profess to be the 
representation — idola^ idols, false appearances, as Bacon 
calls them later — to neutralise the distorting influence of 
metaphysical system by an all-accomplished metaphysic 



VIII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 107 

skill : it is this bold, hard, sober recognition, under a 
very " dry light," of its own proper aim, in union with a 
habit of feehng which on the practical side may perhaps 
open a wide doorway to human weakness, that gives to 
the Cyrenaic doctrine, to reproductions of this doctrine 
in the time of Marius or in oar own, their gravity and 
importance. It was a school to which the young man 
might come, eager for truth, expecting much from 
philosophy, in no ignoble curiosity, aspiring after nothing 
less than an "initiation." He would be sent back, 
sooner or later, to experience, to the world of concrete 
impressions, to things as they may be seen, heard, felt by 
him ; but with a wonderful machinery of observation, 
and free from the tyranny of mere theories. 

So, in intervals of repose, after the agitation which 
followed the death of Flavian, the thoughts of Marius 
ran, while he felt himself as if returned to the fine, clear, 
peaceful light of that pleasant school of healthfully 
sensuous wisdom, in the brilliant old Greek colony, on 
its fresh upland by the sea. Not pleasure, but a general 
completeness of life, was the practical ideal to which this 
anti-metaphysical metaphysic really pointed. And to- 
wards such a full or complete life, a life of various yei 
select sensation, the most direct and effective auxiliary 
must be, in a word, Insight. Liberty of soul, freedom 
from all partial and misrepresentative doctrine which 
does but relieve one element in our experience at the 
cost of another, freedom from all embarrassment alike 
of regret for the past and of calculation on the future : 
this would be but preliminary to the real business of 
education — insight, insight through culture, into all that 
the present moment holds in trust for us, as we stand so 
briefly in its presence. From that maxim of Life as the 
end of life, followed, as a practical consequence, the 
desirableness of refining all the instruments of inward 
and outward intuition, of developing all their capacities, 



io8 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap, viii 

of testing and exercising one's self in them, till one's whole 
nature became one complex medium of reception, to- 
wards the vision — the " beatific vision," if we really cared 
to make it such — of our actual experience in the world. 
Not the conveyance of an abstract body of truths or 
principles, would be the aim of the right education of 
one's self, or of another, but the conveyance of an art — 
an art in some degree peculiar to each individual 
character ; with the modifications, that is, due to its 
special constitution, and the peculiar circumstances of its 
growth, inasmuch as no one of us is " like another^ all m 
alL" 






CHAPTER IX 

NEW CYRENAICISM 

Such were the practical conclusions drawn for himself 
by Marius, when somewhat later he had outgrown the 
mastery of others, from the principle that " all is vanity." 
If he could but count upon the present, if a life brief at 
best could not certainly be shown to conduct one any- 
where beyond itself, if men's highest curiosity was indeed 
so persistently baffled — then, with the Cyrenaics of all 
ages, he would at least fill up the measure of that present 
with vivid sensations, and such intellectual apprehensions, 
as, in strength and directness and their immediately 
realised values at the bar" of an actual experience, are 
most like sensations. So some have spoken in every age : 
for, like all theories which really express a strong natural 
tendency of the human mind or even one of its 
characteristic modes of weakness, this vein of reflection 
is a constant tradition in philosophy. Every age of 
European thought has had its Cyrenaics or Epicureans, 
under many disguises : even under the hood of the monk. 
But — Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die ! — is a 
proposal, the real import of which differs immensely, 
according to the natural taste, and the acquired judg- 
ment, of the guests who sit at the table. It may express 
nothing better than the instinct of Dante's Ciacco, the 
accomplished glutton, in the mud of the Inferno ; or, 



no MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

since on no hypothesis does man " Hve by bread alone,' 
may come to be identical with — " My meat is to do 
what is just and kind ; " while the soul, which can make 
no sincere claim to have apprehended anything beyond the 
veil of immediate experience, yet never loses a sense of 
happiness in conforming to the highest moral ideal it 
can clearly define for itself; and actually, though but 
with so faint hope, does the " Father's business." 

In that age of Marcus Aurelius, so completely dis- 
abused of the metaphysical ambition to pass beyond 
" the flaming ramparts of the world," but, on the other 
hand, possessed of so vast an accumulation of intellectual 
treasure, with so wide a view before it over all varieties 
of what is powerful or attractive in man and his works, 
the thoughts of Marius did but follow the line taken by 
the majority of educated persons, though to a different 
issue. Pitched to a really high and serious key, the 
precept — Be perfect in regard to what is here and now : 
the precept of " culture," as it is called, or of a complete 
education — might at least save him from the vulgarity 
and heaviness of a generation, certainly of no general 
fineness of temper, though with a material well-being 
abundant enough. Conceded that what is secure in our 
existence is but the sharp apex of the present moment 
between two hypothetical eternities, and all that is real in 
our experience but a series of fleeting impressions : — so 
Marius continued the sceptical argument he had con- 
densed, as the matter to hold by, from his various philo- 
sophical reading : — given, that we are never to get beyond 
the walls of this closely shut cell of one's own personality; 
that the ideas we are somehow impelled to form of an 
outer world, and of other minds akin to our own, are, \\ 
may be, but a day-dream, and the thought of any world 
beyond, a day-dream perhaps idler still : then, he, at 
least, in whom those fleeting impressions — faces, voices, 
material sunshine — were very real and imperious, might 



IX MARIUS THE EPICUREAN m 

well set himself to the consideration, how such actual 
moments as they passed might be made to yield their 
utmost, by the most dexterous training of capacity. 
A.mid abstract metaphysical doubts, as to what might lie 
one step only beyond that experience, reinforcing the 
deep original materialism or earthliness of human nature 
itself, bound so intimately to the sensuous world, let him 
at least make the most of what was " here and now." 
In the actual dimness of ways from means to ends — 
ends in themselves desirable, yet for the most part distant 
and for him, certainly, below the visible horizon — he 
would at all events be sure that the means, to use the 
well-worn terminology, should have something of finality 
or perfection about them, and themselves partake, in a 
measure, of the more excellent nature of ends — that the 
means should justify the end. 

With this view he would demand culture, irai^da, as 
the Cyrenaics said, or, in other words, a wide, a complete, 
education — an education partly negative, as ascertaining 
the true limits of man's capacities, but for the most part 
positive, and directed especially to the expansion and 
refinement of the power of reception ; of those powers, 
above all, which are immediately relative to fleeting 
phenomena, the powers of emotion and sense. In such 
an education, an " aesthetic " education, as it might now 
be termed, and certainly occupied very largely with those 
aspects of things which affect us pleasurably through 
sensation, art, of course, including all the finer sorts of 
literature, would have a great part to play. The study of 
music, in that wider Platonic sense, according to which, 
piusic comprehends all those matters over which the 
Muses of Greek mythology preside, would conduct one to 
an exquisite appreciation of all the finer traits of nature 
and of man. Nay ! the products of the imagination 
must themselves be held to present the most perfect 
forms of life — spirit and matter alike under their purest 



£12 MARIUS THE FPICUREAN chap 

and .most perfect conditions — the most strictly appro- 
priate objects of that impassioned contemplation, which, 
in the world of intellectual discipline, as in the highest 
forms of morality and religion, must be held to be the 
essential function of the "perfect." Such manner of 
life might come even to seem a kind of religion — an 
inward, visionary, mystic piety, or religion, by virtue of 
its effort to live days " lovely and pleasant " in themselves, 
here and now, and with an all-sufficiency of well-being 
in the immediate sense of the object contemplated, in- 
dependently of any faith, or hope that might be enter- 
tained as to their ulterior tendency. In this way, the 
true aesthetic culture would be realisable as a new form 
of the contemplative life, founding its claim on the in- 
trinsic " blessedness " of " vision " — the vision of perfect 
men and things. One's human nature, indeed, would 
fain reckon on an assured and endless future, pleasing 
itself with the dream of a final home, to be attained at 
some still remote date, yet with a conscious, delightful 
home-coming at last, as depicted in many an old poetic 
Elysium. On the other hand, the world of perfected 
sensation, intelligence, emotion, is so close to us, and so 
attractive, that the most visionary of spirits must needs 
represent the world unseen in colours, and under a form 
really borrowed from it. Let me be sure then — might 
he not plausibly say ? — that I miss no detail of this 
life of realised consciousness in the present ! Here 
at least is a vision, a theory, ^ewpta, which reposes on 
no basis of unverified hypothesis, which makes no call 
upon a future after all somewhat problematic ; as it 
would be unaffected by any discovery of an Empedocles 
(improving on the old story of Prometheus) as to what had 
really been the origin, and course of development, of 
man's actually attained faculties and that seemingly 
divine particle of reason or spirit in him. Such a 
doctrine, at more leisurable moments, would of course 



tx MARIUS THE EPICUREAN' 113 

have its precepts to deliver on the emDellishment, 
generally, of what is near at hand, on the adornment of 
life, till, in a not impracticable rule of conduct, one's 
existence, from day to day, came to be like a well- 
executed piece of music ; that " perpetual motion " in 
things (so Marius figured the matter to himself, under the 
old Greek imageries) according itself to a kind of cadence 
or harmony. 

It was intelligible that this "aesthetic" philosophy 
might find itself (theoretically, at least, and by way of a 
curious question in casuistry, legitimate from its own 
point of view) weighing the claims of that eager, con- 
centrated, impassioned realisation of experience, against 
those of the received morality. Conceiving its own 
function in a somewhat desperate temper, and becoming, 
as every high-strung form of sentiment, as the religious 
sentiment itself, may become, somewhat antinomian, 
when, in its effort towards the order of experiences it 
prefers, it is confronted with the traditional and popular 
morality, at points where that morality may look very like 
a convention, or a mere stage-property of the world, it 
would be found, from time to time, breaking beyond the 
hmits of the actual moral order; perhaps not without 
some pleasurable excitement in so bold a venture. 

With the possibility of some such hazard as this, in 
thought or even in practice — that it might be, though 
refining, or tonic even, in the case of those strong and in 
health, yet, as Pascal says of the kindly and temperate 
wisdom of Montaigne, " pernicious for those who have 
any natural tendency to impiety or vice," the hne of 
reflection traced out above, was fairly chargeable. — Not, 
however, with " hedonism " and its supposed conse- 
quences. The blood, the heart, of Marius were still 
pure. He knew that his carefully considered theory of 
practice braced him, with the effect of a moral principle 
duly recurring to mind every morning, towards the work 

I 



114 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

of a student, for which he might seem intended. Yet 
there were some among his acquaintance who jumped to 
the conclusion that, with the " Epicurean stye," he was 
making pleasure — pleasure, as they so poorly conceived 
it — the sole motive of life ; and they precluded any 
exacter estimate of the situation by covering it with a 
high-sounding general term, through the vagueness of 
which they were enabled to see the severe and laborious 
youth in the vulgar company of Lais. Words like 
" hedonism " — terms of large and vague comprehension 
— above all when used for a purpose avowedly contro- 
versial, have ever been the worst examples of what are 
called "question-begging terms;" and in that late age in 
which Marius lived, amid the dust of so many centuries 
of philosophical debate, the air was full of them. Yet 
those who used that reproachful Greek term for the 
philosophy of pleasure, were hardly more likely than the 
old Greeks themselves (on whom regarding this very 
subject of the theory of pleasure, their masters in the 
art of thinking had so emphatically to impress the 
necessity of " making distinctions ") to come to any very 
delicately correct ethical conclusions by a reasoning, 
which began with a general term, comprehensive 
enough to cover pleasures so different in quality, in their 
causes and effects, as the pleasures of wine and love, of 
art and science, of religious enthusiasm and political 
enterprise, and of that taste or curiosity which satisfied 
itself with long days of serious study. Yet, in truth, 
each of those pleasurable modes of activity, may, in its 
turn, fairly become the ideal of the "hedonistic" doctrine. 
Really, to the phase of reflection through which Marius 
was then passing, the charge of " hedonism," whatever 
its true weight might be, was not properly applicable at 
all. Not pleasure, but fulness of life, and " insight " as 
conducting to that fulness — energy, variety, and choice 
of experience, including noble pain and sorrow even, 



iX MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 115 

loves such as those in the exquisite old story of 
Apuleius, sincere and strenuous forms of the moral life, 
such as Seneca and Epictetus — whatever form of human 
life, in short, might be heroic, impassioned, ideal : from 
these the " new Cyrenaicism " of Marius took its 
criterion of values. It was a theory, indeed, which might 
properly be regarded as in great degree coincident with 
the main principle of the Stoics themselves, and an older 
version of the precept "Whatsoever thy hand findeth 
to do, do it with thy might" — a doctrine so widely 
acceptable among the nobler spirits of that time. And, 
as with that, its mistaken tendency would lie in the 
direction of a kind of idolatry of mere life, or natural 
gift, or strength — Tidolatrie des talents. 

To understand the various forms of ancient art and 
thought, the various forms of actual human feeling (the 
only new thing, in a world almost too opulent in what 
was old) to satisfy, with a kind of scrupulous equity, the 
claims of these concrete and actual objects on his 
sympathy, his intelligence, his senses — to "pluck out 
the heart of their mystery," and in turn become the 
interpreter of them to others : this had now defined itself 
for Marius as a very narrowly practical design : it 
determined his choice of a vocation to live by. It was 
the era of the rheto?'ida?is, or sophists, as they were some- 
times called ; of men who came in some instances to 
great fame and fortune, by way of a literary cultivation of 
"science." That science, it has been often said, must 
have been wholly an affair of words. But in a world, 
confessedly so opulent in what was old, the work, even of 
genius, must necessarily consist very much in criticism ; 
and, in the case of the more excellent specimens of his 
class, the rhetorician was, after all, the eloquent and effect- 
ive interpreter, for the delighted ears of others, of what 
understanding himself had come by, in years of travel 
and study, of the beautiful house of art and thought 



n6 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chm, 

which was the inheritance of tlie age. The emperor 
Marcus AureHus, to whose service Marius had now been 
called, was himself, more or less openly, a " lecturer." 
That late world, amid many curiously vivid modern 
traits, had this spectacle, so familiar to ourselves, of the 
public lecturer or essayist ; in some cases adding to his 
other gifts that of the Christian preacher, who knows 
how to touch people's sensibilities on behalf of the 
suffering. To follow in the way of these successes, was 
the natural instinct of youthful ambition ; and it was 
with no vulgar egotism that Marius, at the age of nine- 
teen, determined, like many another young man of parts, 
to enter as a student of rhetoric at Rome. 

Though the manner of his work was changed formally 
from poetry to prose, he remained, and must always be, 
of the poetic temper : by which, I mean, among other 
things, that quite independently of the general habit of 
that pensive age he lived much, and as it were by 
system, in reminiscence. Amid his eager grasping at 
the sensation, the consciousness, of the present, he had 
come to see that, after all, the main point of economy 
in the conduct of the present, was the question : — How 
will it look to me, at what shall I value it, this day next 
year? — that in any given day or month one's main 
concern was its impression for the memory. A strange 
trick memory sometimes played him ; for, with no 
natural gradation, what was of last month, or of yester 
day, of to-day even, would seem as far off, as entirely 
detached from him, as things of ten years ago. Detached 
from him, yet very real, there lay certain spaces of his life, 
in delicate perspective, under a favourable light ; and, 
somehow, all the less fortunate detail and circumstance 
had parted from them. Such hours were oftenest those 
in which he had been helped by work of others to 
the pleasurable apprehension of art, of nature, or of life. 
" Not what I do, but what I am, under the power of thi? 



IX MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 117 

vision" — he would say to himself — "is what were 
indeed pleasing to the gods ! " 

And yet, with a kind of inconsistency in one who 
had taken for his philosophic ideal the {xovoxpovos rjSovq 
of Aristippus — the pleasure of the ideal present, of the 
mystic no7a — there would come, together with that 
precipitate sinking of things into the past, a desire, after 
all, to retain " what was so transitive." Could he but 
arrest, for others also, certain clauses of experience, as 
the imaginative memory presented them to himself! 
In those grand, hot summers, he w^ould have imprisoned 
the very perfume of the flowers. To create, to live, 
perhaps, a little while beyond the allotted hours, if it 
were but in a fragment of perfect expression : — it was 
thus his longing defined itself for something to hold by 
amid the "perpetual flux." With men of his vocation, 
people were apt to say, words were things. Well ! with 
him, w^ords should be indeed things, — the w^ord, the 
phrase, valuable in exact proportion to the transparency 
with which it conveyed to others the apprehension, the 
emotion, the mood, so vividly real within himself. Verba- 
que provisam rem non invita seqiientur : Virile apprehen- 
sion of the true nature of things, of the true nature of 
one's own impression, first of all ! — words would follow 
that naturally, a true understanding of one's self being 
ever the first condition of genuine style. Language deli- 
cate and measured, the delicate Attic phrase, for instance, 
in which the eminent Aristeides could speak, was then 
a power to which people's hearts, and sometimes even 
their purses, readily responded. And there were many 
points, as Marius thought, on which the heart of that 
age greatly needed to be touched. He hardly knew 
how strong that old religious sense of responsibility, the 
conscience, as we call it, still was within him — a body 
of inward impressions, as real as those so highly valued 
outward ones- — to offend against which, brought with it 



ii8 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

a strange feeling of disloyalty, as to a person. And the 
determination, adhered to with no misgiving, to add 
nothing, not so much as a transient sigh, to the great 
total of men's unhappiness, in his way through the 
world : — that too was something to rest on, in the drift 
of mere " appearances." 

All this would involve a life of industry, of industrious 
study, only possible through healthy rule, keeping clear 
the eye alike of body and soul. For the male element, 
the logical conscience asserted itself now, with opening 
manhood — asserted itself, even in his literary style, by 
a certain firmness of outline, that touch of the worker in 
metal, amid its richness. Already he blamed instinctively 
alike in his work and in himself, as youth so seldom does, 
all that had not passed a long and liberal process of 
erasure. The happy phrase or sentence was really 
modelled upon a cleanly finished structure of scrup'j 
lous thought. The suggestive force of the one master 
of his development, who had battled so hard with 
imaginative prose ; the utterance, the golden utterance, 
of the other, so content with its living power of persua- 
sion that he had never written at all, — in the commixture 
of these two qualities he set up his literary ideal, and 
this rare blending of grace with an intellectual rigour or 
astringency, was the secret of a singular expressiveness 
in it. 

He acquired at this time a certain bookish air, the 
somewhat sombre habitude of the avowed scholar, which, 
though it never interfered with the perfect tone, " fresh 
and serenely disposed," of the Roman gentleman, yet 
qualified it as by an interesting oblique trait, and fright- 
ened away some of his equals in age and rank. The 
sober discretion of his thoughts, his sustained habit of 
meditation, the sense of those negative conclusions 
enabling him to concentrate himself, with an absorption 
so entire, upon what is immediately here and nou\ gave 



IX MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 119 

him a peculiar manner of intellectual confidence, as of 
one who had indeed been initiated into a great secret. — 
Though with an air so disengaged, he seemed to be 
living so intently in the visible world ! And now, in 
revolt against that pre -occupation with other persons, 
which had so often perturbed his spirit, his wistful 
speculations as to what the real, the greater, experience 
might be, determined in him, not as the longing for love 
— to be with Cynthia, or Aspasia — but as a thirst for 
existence in exquisite places. The veil that was to be 
lifted for him lay over the works of the old masters of 
art, in places where nature also had used her mastery. 
And it was just at this moment that a summons to Rome 
reached him. 



CHAPTER X 



ON THE WAY 



Mil urn est ut animus agitatione motuque corporis excitetur. 

Pliny'' s Letters. 

Many points in that train of thought, its harder and 
more energetic practical details especially, at first 
surmised but vaguely in the intervals of his visits to the 
tomb of Flavian, attained the coherence of formal 
principle amid the stirring incidents of the journey, which 
took him, still in all the buoyancy of his nineteen years 
and greatly expectant, to Rome. That summons had 
come from one of the former friends of his father in the 
capital, who had kept himself acquainted with the lad's 
progress, and, assured of his parts, his courtly ways, 
above all of his beautiful penmanship, now offered him 
a place, virtually that of an afnamiensis, near the person 
of the philosophic emperor. The old town-house of his 
family on the Cselian hill, so long neglected, might well 
require his personal care ; and Marius, relieved a little 
by his preparations for travelling from a certain over- 
tension of spirit in which he had lived of late, was 
presently on his way, to await introduction to Aurelius, 
on his expected return home, after a first success, 
illusive enough as it was soon to appear, against the 
invaders from beyond the Danube. 

The opening stage of his journey, through the firm. 



CHAF. X MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 121 

golden weather, for which he had lingered three days 
beyond the appointed time of starting — days brown with 
the first rains of autumn — brought him, by the byways 
among the lower slopes of the Apennines of Luna, to 
the town of Luca, a station on the Cassian Way ; 
travelling so far mainly on foot, while the baggage 
followed under the care of his attendants. He wore a 
broad felt hat, in fashion not unlike a more modern 
pilgrim's, the neat head projecting from the collar of his 
gr2iy pcenula^ or travelling mantle, sewed closely together 
over the breast, but with its two sides folded up upon 
the shoulders, to leave the arms free in walking, and was 
altogether so trim and fresh, that, as he climbed the hill 
from Pisa, by the long steep lane through the olive-yards, 
and turned to gaze where he could just discern the 
cypresses of the old school garden, like two black lines 
down the yellow walls, a little child took possession of 
his hand, and, looking up at him with entire confidence, 
paced on bravely at his side, for the mere pleasure of 
his company, to the spot where the road declined again 
into the valley beyond. From this point, leaving the 
servants behind, he surrendered himself, a willing 
subject, as he walked, to the impressions of the road, 
and was almost surprised, both at the suddenness with 
which evening came on, and the distance from his old 
home at which it found him. 

And at the little town of Luca, he felt that inde- 
scribable sense of a welcoming in the mere outward 
appearance of things, which seems to mark out certain 
places for the special purpose of evening rest, and 
gives them always a peculiar amiability in retrospect. 
Under the deepening twilight, the rough-tiled roofs seem 
to huddle together side by side, like one continuous 
shelter over the whole township, spread low and broad 
above the snug sleeping-rooms within ; and the place 
one sees for the first time, and must tarry in but for a 



122 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chai>. 

night, breathes the very spirit of home. The cottagers 
lingered at their doors for a few minutes as the shadows 
grew larger, and went to rest early ; though there was 
still a glow along the road through the shorn cornfields, 
and the birds were still awake about the crumbling gray 
heights of an old temple. So quiet and air-swept was 
the place, you could hardly tell where the country left off 
in it, and the field -paths became its streets. Next 
morning he must needs change the manner of his journey. 
The light baggage-wagon returned, and he proceeded 
now more quickly, travelling a stage or two by post, 
along the Cassian Way, where the figures and incidents 
of the great high-road seemed already to tell of the 
capital, the one centre to which all were hastening, or 
had lately bidden adieu. That Way lay through the 
heart of the old, mysterious and visionary country of 
Etruria ; and what he knew of its strange religion of the 
dead, reinforced by the actual sight of the funeral houses 
scattered so plentifully among the dwelling-places of the 
living, revived in him for a while, in all its strength, his 
old instinctive yearning towards those inhabitants of the 
shadowy land he had known in life. It seemed to him 
that he could half divine how time passed in those 
painted houses on the hillsides, among the gold and 
silver ornaments, the wrought armour and vestments, the 
drowsy and dead attendants ; and the close consciousness 
of that vast population gave him no fear, but rather a 
sense of companionship, as he climbed the hills on foot 
behind the horses, through the genial afternoon. 

The road, next day, passed below a town not less 
primitive, it might seem, than its rocky perch — white 
rocks, that had long been glistening before him in the 
distance. Down the dewy paths the people were 
descending from it, to keep a holiday, high and low 
alike in rough, white-linen smocks. A homely old play 
was just begun in an open-air theatre, with seats 



i 



It MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 123 

hollowed out of the turf-grown slope. Marius caught 
the terrified expression of a child in its mother's arms, 
as it turned from the yawning mouth of a great mask, 
for refuge in her bosom. The way mounted, and 
descended again, down the steep street of another place, 
all resounding with the noise of metal under the hammer ; 
for every house had its brazier's workshop, the bright 
objects of brass and copper gleaming, like lights in a 
cave, out of their dark roofs and corners. Around the 
anvils the children were watching the work, or ran to 
fetch water to the hissing, red-hot metal ; and Marius 
too watched, as he took his hasty mid-day refreshment, 
a mess of chestnut-meal and cheese, while the swelling 
surface of a great copper water-vessel grew flowered all 
over with tiny petals under the skilful strokes. Towards 
dusk, a frantic woman at the roadside, stood and cried 
out the words of some philter, or mahson, in verse, with 
weird motion of her hands, as the travellers passed, like 
a wild picture drawn from Virgil. 

But all along, accompanying the superficial grace of 
these incidents of the way, Marius noted, more and 
more as he drew nearer to Rome, marks of the great 
plague. Under Hadrian and his successors, there had 
been many enactments to improve the condition of the 
slave. The ergastula were abolished. But no system 
of free labour had as yet succeeded. A whole mendi- 
cant population, artfully exaggerating every symptom 
and circumstance of misery, still hung around, or 
sheltered themselves within, the vast walls of their old, 
half-ruined task-houses. And for the most part they had 
been variously stricken by the pestilence. For once, the 
heroic level had been reached in rags, squints, scars — 
every caricature of the human type — ravaged beyond 
what could have been thought possible if it were to 
survive at all. Meantime, the farms were less carefully 
tended than of old : here and there they were lapsing 



124 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

into their natural wildness : some villas also were partly 
fallen into ruin. The picturesque, romantic Italy of a 
later time — the Italy of Claude and Salvator Rosa — was 
already forming, for the delight of the modern romantic 
traveller. 

And again Marius was aware of a real change in 
things, on crossing the Tiber, as if some magic effect lay 
in that ; though here, in truth, the Tiber was but a 
modest enough stream of turbid water. Nature, under 
the richer sky, seemed readier and more affluent, and 
man fitter to the conditions around him : even in people 
hard at work there appeared to be a less burdensome 
sense of the mere business of life. How dreamily the 
women were passing up through the broad light and 
shadow of the steep streets with the great water-pots 
resting on their heads, like women of Caryas, set free 
from slavery in old Greek temples. With what a fresh, 
primeval poetry was daily existence here impressed — all 
the details of the threshing-floor and the vineyard ; the 
common farm -life even; the great bakers' fires aglow 
upon the road in the evening. In the presence of all 
this Marius felt for a moment like those old, early, un- 
conscious poets, who created the famous Greek myths of 
Dionysus, and the Great Mother, out of the imagery of 
the wine-press and the ploughshare. And still the 
motion of the journey was bringing his thoughts to 
systematic form. He seemed to have grown to the 
fulness of intellectual manhood, on his way hither. The 
formative and literary stimulus, so to call it, of peaceful 
exercise which he had always observed in himself, doing 
its utmost now, the form and the matter of thought alike 
detached themselves clearly and with readiness from the 
healthfully excited brain. — " It is wonderful," says Pliny, 
" how the mind is stirred to activity by brisk bodily 
exercise." The presentable aspects of inmost thought 
and feeling became evident to him : the structure of all 



K MAklUS THE EPICUREAN 125 

Re meant, its order and outline, defined itself: his 
general sense of a fitness and beauty in words became 
effective in daintily pliant sentences, with all sorts of 
felicitous linking of figure to abstraction. It seemed 
just then as'if the desire of the artist in him — that old 
longing to produce — might be satisfied by the exact and 
literal transcript of what was then passing around him, 
in simple prose, arresting the desirable moment as it 
passed, and prolonging its life a little. — To live in the 
concrete ! To be sure, at least, of one's hold upon that ! 
— Again, his philosophic scheme was but the reflection 
of the data of sense, and chiefly of sight, a reduction to 
the abstract, of the brilliant road he travelled on, through 
the sunshine. 

But on the seventh evening there came a reaction 
in the cheerful flow of our traveller's thoughts, a 
reaction with which mere bodily fatigue, asserting itself 
at last over his curiosity, had much to do ; and he fell 
into a mood, known to all passably sentimental way- 
farers, as night deepens again and again over their path, 
in which all journeying, from the known to the unknown, 
comes suddenly to figure as a mere foolish truancy — 
like a child's running away from home — with the feeling 
that one had best return at once, even through the 
darkness. He had chosen to climb on foot, at his 
leisure, the long windings by which the road ascended 
to the place where that day's stage was to end, and 
found himself alone in the twilight, far behind the rest 
of his travelling-companions. Would the last zigzag, 
round and round those dark masses, half natural rock, 
half artificial substructure, ever bring him within the 
circuit of the walls above ? It was now that a startling 
incident turned those misgivings almost into actual fear. 
From the steep slope a heavy mass of stone was 
detached, after some whisperings among the trees above 
his head, and rushing down through the stillness fell to 



126 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap 

pieces in a cloud of dust across the road just behind 
him, so that he felt the touch upon his heel. That was 
sufficient, just then, to rouse out of its hiding-place his 
old vague fear of evil — of one's " enemies " — a distress, 
so much a matter of constitution with him, that at times 
it would seem that the best pleasures of life could but 
be snatched, as it were hastily, in one moment's forget- 
fulness of its dark, besetting influence. A sudden 
suspicion of hatred against him, of the nearness of 
" enemies," seemed all at once to alter the visible form 
of things, as with the child's hero, when he found thf 
footprint on the sand of his peaceful, dreamy island. 
His elaborate philosophy had not put beneath his feet 
the terror of mere bodily evil ; much less of " inexor- 
able fate, and the noise of greedy Acheron." 

The resting-place to which he presently came, in the 
keen, wholesome air of the market-place of the little 
hill-town, was a pleasant contrast to that last effort of his 
journey. The room in which he sat down to supper, 
unlike the ordinary Roman inns at that day, was trim 
and sweet The firelight danced cheerfully upon the 
polished, three -wicked lucerncB burning cleanly with 
the best oil, upon the whitewashed walls, and the 
bunches of scarlet carnations set in glass goblets. The 
white wine of the place put before him, of the true 
colour and flavour of the grape, and with a ring of 
delicate foam as it mounted in the cup, had a reviving 
edge or freshness he had found in no other wine. 
These things had relieved a little the melancholy of the 
hour before ; and it was just then that he heard the 
voice of one, newly arrived at the inn, making his way 
to the upper floor — a youthful voice, with a reassuring 
clearness of note, which completed his cure. 

He seemed to hear that voice again in dreams, 
uttering his name : then, awake in the full morning 
light and gazing from the window, saw the guest of the 



K MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 127 

night before, a very honourable -looking youth, in the 
rich habit of a military knight, standing beside his horse, 
and already making preparations to depart. It happened 
that Marius, too, was to take that day's journey on 
horseback. Riding presently from the inn, he overtook 
Cornelius — of the Twelfth Legion — advancing carefully 
down the steep street ; and before they had issued from 
the gates of Urbs-vetus, the two young men had broken 
into talk together. They were passing along the street 
of the goldsmiths ; and Cornelius must needs enter one 
of the workshops for the repair of some button or link 
of his knightly trappings. Standing in the doorway, 
Marius watched the work, as he had watched the brazier's 
business a few days before, wondering most at the 
simplicity of its processes, a simplicity, however, on 
which only genius in that craft could have lighted. — By 
what unguessed-at stroke of hand, for instance, had the 
grains of precious metal associated themselves with so 
daintily regular a roughness, over the surface of the 
little casket yonder? And the conversation which 
followed, hence arising, left the two travellers with 
sufficient interest in each other to insure an easy com- 
panionship for the remainder of their journey. In time 
to come, Marius was to depend very much on the 
preferences, the personal judgments, of the comrade 
who now laid his hand so brotherly on his shoulder, 
as they left the workshop. 

liuieris matuti7ii gratiam captjnus^ — observes one of 
our scholarly travellers ; and their road that day lay 
through a country, well-fitted, by the peculiarity of its 
landscape, to ripen a first acquaintance into intimacy ; 
its superficial ugliness throwing the wayfarers back upon 
each other's entertainment in a real exchange of ideas, 
the tension of which, however, it would relieve, ever and 
anon, by the unexpected assertion of something singu- 
larly attractive. The immediate aspect of the land was. 



I2S MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap 

indeed, in spite of abundant olive and ilex, unpleasing 
enough. A river of clay seemed, " in some old night of 
time," to have burst up over valley and hill, and hardened 
there into fantastic shelves and slides and angles of 
cadaverous rock, up and down among the contorted 
vegetation ; the hoary roots and trunks seeming to con- 
fess some weird kinship with them. But that was long 
ago ; and these pallid hillsides needed only the declining 
sun, touching the rock with purple, and throwing deeper 
shadow into the immemorial foliage, to put on a peculiar, 
because a very grave and austere, kind of beauty ; while 
the graceful outlines common to volcanic hills asserted 
themselves in the broader prospect. And, for senti- 
mental Marius, all this was associated, by some perhaps 
fantastic affinity, with a peculiar trait of severity, beyond 
his guesses as to the secret of it, which mingled with the 
blitheness of his new companion. Concurring, indeed, 
with the condition of a Roman soldier, it was certainly 
something far more than the expression of military hard- 
ness, or ascesis ; and what was earnest, or even austere, 
in the landscape they had traversed together, seemed to 
have been waiting for the passage of this figure to 
interpret or inform it. Again, as in his early days with 
Flavian, a vivid personal presence broke through the 
dreamy idealism, which had almost come to doubt of 
other men's reality : reassuringly, indeed, yet not with- 
out some sense of a constraining tyranny over him from 
without. 

For Cornelius, returning from the campaign, to take 
up his quarters on the Palatine^ in the imperial guard, 
seemed to carry about with him, in that privileged world 
of comely usage to which he belonged, the atmosphere 
of some still more jealously exclusive circle. They 
halted on the morrow at noon, not at an inn, but at the 
house of one of the young soldier's friends, whom they 
found absent, indeed, in consequence of the plague in 



s MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 129 

those parts, so that after a mid-day rest only, they pro- 
ceeded again on their journey. The great room of the 
villa, to which they were admitted, had lain long un- 
touched ; and the dust rose, as they entered, into the 
slanting bars of sunlight, that fell through the half-closed 
shutters. It was here, to while away the time, that 
Cornelius bethought himself of displaying to his new 
friend the various articles and ornaments of his knightly 
array — the breastplate, the sandals and cuirass, lacing 
them on, one by one, with the assistance of Marius, and 
finally the great golden bracelet on the right arm, con- 
ferred on him by his general for an act of valour. And 
as he gleamed there, amid that odd interchange of light 
and shade, with the staff of a silken standard firm in 
his hand, Marius felt as if he were face to face, for the 
first time, with some new knighthood or chivalry, just 
then coming into the world. 

It was soon after they left this place, journeying now 
by carriage, that Rome was seen at last, with much 
excitement on the part of our travellers ; Cornelius, and 
some others of whom the party then consisted, agreeing, 
chiefly for the sake of Marius, to hasten forward, that it 
might be reached by dayfight, with a cheerful noise of 
rapid wheels as they passed over the flagstones. But 
the highest light upon the mausoleum of Hadrian was 
quite gone out, and it was dark, before they reached the 
Flaminian Gate. The abundant sound of water was 
the one thing that impressed Marius, as they passed 
down a long street, with many open spaces on either 
hand : Cornelius to his military quarters, and Marius 
to the old dwelling-place of his fathers. 



CHAPTER XI 

**THE MOST RELIGIOUS CITY IN THE WORLD*' 

Marius awoke early and passed curiously from room to 
room, noting for more careful inspection by and by the 
rolls of manuscripts. Even greater than his curiosity in 
gazing for the first time on this ancient possession, was 
his eagerness to look out upon Rome itself, as he 
pushed back curtain and shutter, and stepped forth in the 
fresh morning upon one of the many balconies, with an 
oft-repeated dream realised at last. He was certainly 
fortunate in the time of his coming to Rome. That old 
pagan world, of which Rome was the flower, had reached 
its perfection in the things of poetry and art — a per- 
fection which indicated only too surely the eve of decline. 
As in some vast intellectual museum, all its manifold 
products were intact and in their places, and with 
custodians also still extant, duly qualified to appreciate 
and explain them. And at no period of history had the 
material Rome itself been better worth seeing — lying 
there not less consummate than that world of pagan 
intellect which it represented in every phase of its dark- 
ness and light. The various work of many ages fell 
here harmoniously together, as yet untouched save by 
time, adding the final grace of a rich softness to its 
complex expression. Much which spoke of ages earlier 
than Nero, the great re -builder, lingered on, antique, 



CHAP. XI MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 131 

quaint, immeasurably venerable, like the relics of the 
medieval city in the Paris of Lewis the Fourteenth : the 
work of Nero's own time had come to have that sort of 
old world and picturesque interest which the work of 
Lewis has for ourselves ; while without stretching a 
parallel too far we might perhaps liken the architectural 
finesses of the archaic Hadrian to the more excellent 
products of our own Gothic revival. The temple of 
Antoninus and Faustina was still fresh in all the majesty 
of its closely arrayed columns of cipollino ; but, on the 
whole, little had been added under the late and present 
emperors, and during fifty years of public quiet, a sober 
brown and gray had grown apace on things. The gilding 
on the roof of many a temple had lost its garishness : 
cornice and capital of polished marble shone out with all 
the crisp freshness of real flowers, amid the already 
mouldering travertine and brickwork, though the birds 
had built freely among them. What Marius then saw 
was in many respects, after all deduction of difference, 
more like the modern Rome than the enumeration of 
particular losses might lead us to suppose ; the Renais- 
sance, in its most ambitious mood and with amplest 
resources, having resumed the ancient classical tradition 
there, with no break or obstruction, as it had happened, 
in any very considerable work of the middle age. Im- 
mediately before him, on the square, steep height, where 
the earhest little old Rome had huddled itself together, 
arose the palace of the Caesars. Half- veiling the vast 
substruction of rough, brown stone — line upon line of 
successive ages of builders — the trim, old-fashioned garden 
walks, under their closely-woven walls of dark glossy foliage, 
test of long and careful cultivation, wound gradually, 
among choice trees, statues and fountains, distinct and 
sparkHng in the full morning sunlight, to the richly tinted 
mass of pavilions and corridors above, centering in the 
lofty, white-marble dwelling-place of Apollo himself. 



132 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

How often had Marius looked forward to that first, 
free wandering through Rome, to which he now went 
forth, with a heat in the town sunshine (Hke a mist of 
fine gold-dust spread through the air) to the height of his 
desire, making the dun coolness of the narrow streets 
welcome enough at intervals. He almost feared, 
descending the stair hastily, lest some unforeseen accident 
should snatch the little cup of enjoyment from him ere 
he passed the door. In such morning rambles in places 
new to him, life had always seemed to come at its 
fullest : it was then he could feel his youth, that youth 
the days of which he had already begun to count 
jealously, in entire possession. So the grave, pensive figure, 
a figure, be it said nevertheless, fresher far than often 
came across it now, moved through the old city towards 
the lodgings of Cornelius, certainly not by the most direct 
course, however eager to rejoin the friend of yesterday. 

Bent as keenly on seeing as if his first day in Rome 
were to be also his last, the two friends descended along 
the Vicus Tuscus, with its rows of incense-stalls, into the 
Via Nova, where the fashionable people were busy 
shopping; and Marius saw with much amusement the 
frizzled heads, then a la mode. A ghmpse of the 
Marmoi-aia, the haven at the river-side, where specimens 
of all the precious marbles of the world were lying amid 
great white blocks from the quarries of Luna, took his 
thoughts for a moment to his distant home. They 
visited the flower-market, lingering where the coronarii 
pressed on them the newest species, and purchased 
zinias, now in blossom (like painted flowers, thought 
Marius), to decorate the folds of their togas. Loitering 
to the other side of the Forum, past the great Galen's 
drug-shop, after a glance at the announcements of new 
poems on sale attached to the doorpost of a famous 
bookseller, they entered the curious library of the Temple 
of Peace, then a favourite resort of literary men, and 



XI MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 133 

read, fixed there for all to see, the Dmr?iai or Gazette 
of the day, which announced, together with births and 
deaths, prodigies and accidents, and much mere matter 
of business, the date and manner of the philosophic 
emperor's joyful return to his people ; and, thereafter, 
with eminent names faintly disguised, what would carry 
that day's news, in many copies, over the provinces — a 
certain matter concerning the great lady, known to be 
dear to him, whom he had left at home. It was a story, 
with the development of which "society" had indeed 
for some time past edified or amused itself, rallying 
sufficiently from the panic of a year ago, not only to 
welcome back its ruler, but also to relish a chronique 
scandaleuse ; and thus, when soon after Marius saw the 
world's wonder, he was already acquainted with the 
suspicions which have ever since hung about her name. 
Twelve o'clock was come before they left the Forum, 
waiting in a httle crowd to hear the Accenstis, according 
to old custom, proclaim the hour of noonday, at the 
moment when from the steps of the Senate-house, the 
sun could be seen standing between the Rostra and the 
Grcecostasis. He exerted for this function a strength of 
voice, which confirmed in Marius a judgment the modern 
visitor may share with him, that Roman throats and 
Roman chests, namely, must, in some peculiar way, be 
differently constructed from those of other people. Such 
judgment indeed he had formed in part the evening be- 
fore, noting, as a religious procession passed him, how 
much noise a man and a boy could make, though not 
without a great deal of real music, of which in truth the 
Romans were then as ever passionately fond. 

Hence the two friends took their way through the Via 
Flaminia^ almost along the line of the modern Corso^ 
already bordered with handsome villas, turning presently 
to the left, into the Field-of-Mars, still the playground of 
Rome. But the vast public edifices were grown to 



134 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

be almost continuous over the grassy expanse, represented 
now only by occasional open spaces of verdure and wild- 
flowers. In one of these a crowd was standing, to watch 
a party of athletes stripped for exercise. Marius had 
been surprised at the luxurious variety of the litters 
borne through Rome, where no carriage horses were 
allowed ; and just then one far more sumptuous than 
the rest, with dainty appointments of ivory and gold, 
was carried by, all the town pressing with eagerness to 
get a glimpse of its most beautiful woman, as she passed 
rapidly. Yes ! there, was the wonder of the world — the 
empress Faustina herself: Marius could distinguish, 
could distinguish clearly, the well-known profile, between 
the floating purple curtains. 

For indeed all Rome was ready to burst into gaiety 
again, as it awaited with much real affection, hopeful and 
animated, the return of its emperor, for whose ovation 
various adornments were preparing along the streets 
through which the imperial procession would pass. He 
had left Rome just twelve months before, amid immense 
gloom. The alarm of a barbarian insurrection along 
the whole line of the Danube had happened at the 
moment when Rome was panic-stricken by the great 
pestilence. 

In fifty years of peace, broken only by that conflict 
in the East from which Lucius Verus, among other 
curiosities, brought back the plague, war had come 
to seem a merely romantic, superannuated incident of 
bygone history. And now it was almost upon Italian 
soil. Terrible were the reports of the numbers and 
audacity of the assailants. Aurelius, as yet untried in 
war, and understood by a few only in the whole scope of 
a really great character, was known to the majority of his 
subjects as but a careful administrator, though a student 
of philosophy, perhaps, as we say, a dilettante. But he 
was also the visible centre of government, towards whom 



XI MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 135 

the hearts of a whole people turned, grateful for fifty years 
of public happiness — its good genius, its " Antonine " — 
whose fragile person might be foreseen speedily giving 
way under the trials of military life, with a disaster 
like that of the slaughter of the legions by Arminius. 
Prophecies of the world's impending conflagration were 
easily credited : " the secular fire " would descend from 
heaven : superstitious fear had even demanded the 
sacrifice of a human victim. 

Marcus Aurelius, always philosophically considerate 
of the humours of other people, exercising also that 
devout appreciation of every religious claim which was 
one of his characteristic habits, had invoked, in aid of 
the commonwealth, not only all native gods, but all 
foreign deities as well, however strange. — "Help ! Help ! 
in the ocean space ! " A multitude of foreign priests 
had been welcomed to Rome, with their various peculiar 
religious rites. The sacrifices made on this occasion 
were remembered for centuries ; and the starving poor, 
at least, found some satisfaction in the flesh of those 
herds of "white bulls," which came into the city, day 
after day, to yield the savour of their blood to the 
gods. 

In spite of all this, the legions had but followed their 
standards despondently. But prestige, personal prestige, 
the name of " Emperor," still had its magic power over 
the nations. The mere approach of the Roman army 
made an impression on the barbarians. Aurelius and his 
colleague had scarcely reached Aquileia when a deputa- 
tion arrived to ask for peace. And now the two imperial 
"brothers" were returning home at leisure; were waiting, 
indeed, at a villa outside the walls, till the capital had 
made ready to receive them. But although Rome was 
thus in genial reaction, with much relief, and hopefulness 
against the winter, facing itself industriously in damask 
of red and gold, those two enemies were still unmis- 



136 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

takably extant : the barbarian army of the Danube was 
but over-awed for a season ; and the plague, as we saw 
when Marius was on his way to Rome, was not to depart 
till it had done a large part in the formation of the melan- 
choly picturesque of modern Italy — till it had made, or 
prepared for the making of the Roman Campagna. The 
old, unaffected, really pagan, peace or gaiety, of Antoninus 
Pius — that genuine though unconscious humanist — was 
gone for ever. And again and again, throughout this 
day of varied observation, Marius had been reminded, 
above all else, that he was not merely in "the most 
religious city of the world," as one had said, but that 
Rome was become the romantic home of the wildest 
superstition. Such superstition presented itself almost as 
religious mania in many an incident of his long ramble, 
— incidents to which he gave his full attention, though 
contending in some measure with a reluctance on the 
part of his companion, the motive of which he did 
not understand till long afterwards. Marius certainly 
did not allow this reluctance to deter his own curiosity. 
Had he not come to Rome partly under poetic vocation, 
to receive all those things, the very impress of life itself, 
upon the visual, the imaginative, organ, as upon a 
mirror ; to reflect them ; to transmute them into golden 
words ? He must observe that strange medley of 
superstition, that centuries' growth, layer upon layer, of 
the curiosities of religion (one faith jostling another out 
of place) at least for its picturesque interest, and as an 
indifferent outsider might, not too deeply concerned 
in the question which, if any of them, was to be the 
survivor. 

Superficially, at least, the Roman religion, allying 
itself with much diplomatic economy to possible rivals, 
was in possession, as a vast and complex system of 
usage, intertwining itself with every detail of public and 
private life, attractively enough for those who had but 



XI MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 137 

"the historic temper," and a taste for the past, however 
much a Lucian might depreciate it. Roman rehgion, as 
Marius knew, had, indeed, been always something to be 
done, rather than something to be thought, or beHeved, 
or loved ; something to be done in minutely detailed 
manner, at a particular time and place, correctness in 
which had long been a matter of laborious learning with 
a whole school of ritualists — as also, now and again, a 
matter of heroic sacrifice with certain exceptionally 
devout souls, as when Caius Fabius Dorso, with his life 
in his hand, succeeded in passing the sentinels of the 
invading Gauls to perform a sacrifice on the Quirinal, and, 
thanks to the divine protection, had returned in safety. 
So jealous was the distinction between sacred and 
profane, that, in the matter of the "regarding of days," 
it had made more than half the year a hohday. Aurelius 
had, indeed, ordained that there should be no more than 
a hundred and thirty-five festival days in the year ; but 
in other respects he had followed in the steps of his 
predecessor, Antoninus Pius — commended especially for 
his "religion," his conspicuous devotion to its public 
ceremonies — and whose coins are remarkable for their 
reference to the oldest and most hieratic types of Roman 
mythology. Aurelius had succeeded in more than 
healing the old feud between philosophy and religion, 
displaying himself, in singular combination, as at once 
the most zealous of philosophers and the most devout 
of polytheists, and lending himself, with an air of con- 
viction, to all the pageantries of public worship. To his 
pious recognition of that one orderly spirit, which, 
according to the doctrine of the Stoics, diffuses itself 
through the world, and animates it — a recognition taking 
the form, with him, of a constant effort towards inward 
likeness thereto, in the harmonious order of his own soul 
— he had added a warm personal devotion towards the 
whole multitude of the old national gods, and a great 



138 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap 

many new foreign ones besides, by him, at least, not 
ignobly conceived. If the comparison may be reverently 
made, there was something here of the method by which 
the catholic church has added the cultus of the saints to 
its worship of the one Divine Being. 

And to the view of the majority, though the emperor, 
as the personal centre of religion, entertained the hope 
of converting his people to philosophic faith, and had 
even pronounced certain public discourses for their 
instruction in it, that polytheistic devotion was his most 
striking feature. Philosophers, indeed, had, for the most 
part, thought with Seneca, " that a man need not lift his 
hands to heaven, nor ask the sacristan's leave to put his 
mouth to the ear of an image, that his prayers might be 
heard the better." — Marcus AureHus, " a master in Israel," 
knew all that well enough. Yet his outward devotion 
was much more than a concession to popular sentiment, 
or a mere result of that sense of fellow-citizenship with 
others, which had made him. again and again, under 
most difficult circumstances, an excellent comrade. 
Those others, too ! — amid all their ignorances, what were 
they but instruments in the administration of the Divine 
Reason, " from end to end sweetly and strongly dispos- 
ing all things " ? Meantime " Philosophy " itself had 
assumed much of what we conceive to be the religious 
character. It had even cultivated the habit, the power, 
of " spiritual direction ; " the troubled soul making 
recourse in its hour of destitution, or amid the dis- 
tractions of the world, to this or that director — philo- 
sopho suo — who could really best understand it. 

And it had been in vain that the old, grave and 
discreet religion of Rome had set itself, according to its 
proper genius, to prevent or subdue all trouble and dis- 
turbance in men's souls. In religion, as in other matters, 
plebeians, as such, had a taste for movement, for revolution; 
and it had been ever in the most populous quarters that 



XI MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 139 

religious changes began. To the apparatus of foreign 
religion, above all, recourse had been made in times of 
public disquietude or sudden terror ; and in those great 
religious celebrations, before his proceeding against the 
barbarians, AureUus had even restored the solemnities 
of Isis, prohibited in the capital since the time of 
Augustus, making no secret of his worship of that god- 
dess, though her temple had been actually destroyed by 
authority in the reign of Tiberius. Her singular and 
in many ways beautiful ritual was now popular in Rome. 
i\nd then — what the enthusiasm of the swarming plebeian 
quarters had initiated, was sure to be adopted, sooner 
or later, by women of fashion. A blending of all the 
religions of the ancient world had been accomplished. 
The new gods had arrived, had been welcomed, and 
found their places ; though, certainly, with no real 
security, in any adequate ideal of the divine nature itself 
in the background of men's minds, that the presence of 
the new-comer should be edifying, or even refining. 
High and low addressed themselves to all deities alike 
without scruple; confusing them together when they 
praj-ed, and in the old, authorised, threefold veneration 
of their visible images, by flowers, incense, and cere- 
monial lights — those beautiful usages, which the church, 
in her way through the world, ever making spoil of the 
world's goods for the better uses of the human spirit, 
took up and sanctified in her service. 

And certainly " the most religious city in the world " 
took no care to veil its devotion, however fantastic. 
The humblest house had its little chapel or shrine, its 
image and lamp; while almost every one seemed to 
exercise some religious function and responsibility. 
Colleges, composed for the most part of slaves and of 
the poor, provided for the service of the Covipitalian 
Lares — the gods who presided, respectively, over the 
several quarters of the city. In one street, Marius 



MO MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

witnessed an incident of the festival of the patron deity 
of that neighbourhood, the way being strewn with box, 
the houses tricked out gaily in such poor finery as they 
possessed, while the ancient idol was borne through it 
in procession, arrayed in gaudy attire the worse for wear. 
Numerous religious clubs had their stated anniversaries, 
on which the members issued with much ceremony from 
their guild-hall, or schola, and traversed the thoroughfares 
of Rome, preceded, like the confraternities of the present 
day, by their sacred banners, to offer sacrifice before 
some famous image. Black with the perpetual smoke 
of lamps and incense, oftenest old and ugly, perhaps on 
that account the more likely to listen to the desires of 
the suffering — had not those sacred effigies sometimes 
given sensible tokens that they were aware ? The image 
of the Fortune of WovciQn—Fortuna Midiebris, in the 
Latin Way, had spoken (not once only) and declared ; 
Bene me, Matronce I vidistis riteque dedicastis I The 
Apollo of Cumae had wept during three whole nights and 
days. The images in the temple of Juno Sospita had 
been seen to sweat. Nay ! there was blood — divine 
blood — in the hearts of some of them : the images in 
the Grove of Feronia had sweated blood ! 

From one and all Cornelius had turned away : like 
the " atheist" of whom Apuleius tells he had never once 
raised hand to lip in passing image or sanctuary, and had 
parted from Marius finally when the latter determined 
to enter the crowded doorway of a temple, on their return 
into the Forum, below the Palatine hill, where the 
mothers were pressing in, with a multitude of every sort 
of children, to touch the lightning-struck image of the 
wolf-nurse of Romulus — so tender to httle ones ! — just 
discernible in its dark shrine, amid a blaze of lights. 
Marius gazed after his companion of the day, as he 
mounted the steps to his lodging, singing to himself, a? 
it seemed. Marius failed precLsely to catch the words. 



XI MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 141 

And, as the rich, fresh evening came on, there was 
heard all over Rome, far above a whisper, the whole 
town seeming hushed to catch it distinctly, the lively, 
reckless call to " play," from the sons and daughters of 
foolishness, to those in whom their life was still green — 
Do7iec virenti canities abest! — Donee vi7-enti canities abest! 
Marius could hardly doubt how Cornelius would have 
taken the call. And as for himself, slight as was the 
burden of positive moral obligation with which he had 
entered Rome, it was to no wasteful and vagrant 
affections, such as these, that his Epicureanism had 
committed him. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE DIVINITY THAT DOTH HEDGE A KING 

But ah ! Mcficenas is yclad in claye, 
And great Augustus long ygoe is dead, 
And all the worthies liggen wrapt in lead. 
That matter made for poets on to playe. 

Marcus Aurelius who, though he had little relish for 
them himself, had ever been willing to humour the taste 
of his people for nfagnificent spectacles, was received 
back to Rome with the lesser honours of the Ovation^ 
conceded by the Senate (so great was the public sense 
of deliverance) with even more than the laxity which 
had become its habit under imperial rule, for there had 
been no actual bloodshed in the late achievement. 
Clad in the civic dress of the chief Roman magistrate, 
and with a crown of myrtle upon his head, his colleague 
similarly attired walking beside him, he passed up to the 
Capitol on foot, though in solemn procession along the 
Sacred Way, to offer sacrifice to the national gods. The 
victim, a goodly sheep, whose image we may still see 
between the pig and the ox of the Siwvetaurilia, filleted 
and stoled almost like some ancient canon of the church, 
on a sculptured fragment in the Forum, was conducted by 
the priests, clad in rich white vestments, and bearing 
their sacred utensils of massive gold, immediately behind a 
comi)any of flute-players, led by the great choir-master, oi 



CHAP. XII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 143 

cofiductor, of the day, visibly tetchy or dehghted, according 
as the instruments he ruled with his tuning-rod, rose, more 
or less adequately amid the difficulties of the way, to the 
dream of perfect music in the soul within him. The 
vast crowd, including the soldiers of the triumphant 
army, now restored to wives and children, all alike in 
holiday whiteness, had left their houses early in the fine, 
dry morning, in a real affection for "the father of his 
country," to await the procession, the two princes having 
spent the preceding night outside the walls, at the old 
Villa of the Republic. Marius, full of curiosity, had 
taken his position with much care ; and stood to see the 
world's masters pass by, at an angle from which he could 
command the view of a great part of the processional 
route, sprinkled with fine yellow sand, and punctiliously 
guarded from profane footsteps. 

The coming of the pageant was announced by the 
clear sound of the flutes, heard at length above the 
acclamations of the people — Salve Lnperator I — Dii ie 
seruent I — shouted in regular time, over the hills. It 
was on the central figure, of course, that the whole 
attention of Marius was fixed from the moment when 
the procession came in sight, preceded by the lictors with 
gxXdi^^ fasces^ the imperial image-bearers, and the pages 
carrying lighted torches ; a band of knights, among whom 
was Cornelius in complete military array, following. 
Amply swathed about in the folds of a richly worked 
toga, after a manner now long since become obsolete with 
meaner persons, Marius beheld a man of about five-and- 
forty years of age, with prominent eyes — eyes, which 
although demurely downcast during this essentially 
religious ceremony, were by nature broadly and benig- 
nantly observant. He was still, in the main, as we see 
him in the busts which represent his gracious and courtly 
youth, when Hadrian had playfully called him, not Verus, 
after the name of his father, but VerissimuSy for his 



144 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

candour of gaze, and the bland capacity of the brow, 
which, below the brown hair, clustering thickly as of old, 
shone out low, broad, and clear, and still without a trace 
of the trouble of his lips. You saw the brow of one who, 
amid the blindness or perplexity of the people about him, 
understood all things clearly ; the dilemma, to which his 
experience so far had brought him, between Chance with 
meek resignation, and a Providence with boundless possi- 
bilities and hope, being for him at least distinctly defined. 
That outward serenity, which he valued so highly as 
a point of manner or expression not unworthy the care 
of a public minister — outward symbol, it might be 
thought, of the inward religious serenity it had been his 
constant purpose to maintain — was increased to-day by 
his sense of the gratitude of his people ; that his life had 
been one of such gifts and blessings as made his person 
seem in very deed divine to them. Yet the cloud of 
some reserved internal sorrow, passing from time to time 
into an expression of fatigue and effort, of loneliness 
amid the shouting multitude, might have been detected 
there by the more observant — as if the sagacious hint of 
one of his officers, " The soldiers can't understand you, 
they don't know Greek," were applicable always to his 
relationships with other people. The nostrils and mouth 
seemed capable almost of peevishness ; and Marius 
^noted in them, as in the hands, and in the spare body 
generally, what was new to his experience — something 
of asceticism, as we say, of a bodily gymnastic, by which, 
although it told pleasantly in the clear blue humours of 
the eye, the flesh had scarcely been an equal gainer with 
the spirit. It was hardly the expression of " the healthy 
mind in the healthy body," but rather of a sacrifice of 
the body to the soul, its needs and aspirations, that 
Marius seemed to divine in this assiduous student of the 
Greek sages — a sacrifice, in truth, far beyond the demands 
of their very saddest philosophy of life. 



XII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 145 

Dignify thyselj with modesty a?zd si??iplicity for thine 
ornaments ! — had been ever a maxim with this dainty 
and high-bred Stoic, who still thought ma?iners a true 
part of ??i07'als, according to the old sense of the term, 
and who regrets now and again that he cannot control 
his thoughts equally well with his countenance. That 
outward composure was deepened during the solemnities 
of this day by an air of pontifical abstraction ; which, 
though very far from being pride — nay, a sort of 
humility rather — yet gave, to himself, an air of un- 
approachableness, and to his whole proceeding, in which 
every minutest act was considered, the character of a 
ritual. Certainly, there was no haughtiness, social, 
moral, or even philosophic, in Aurelius, who had 
realised, under more trying conditions perhaps than any 
one before, that no element of humanity could be alien 
from him. Yet, as he walked to-day, the centre of ten 
thousand observers, with eyes discreetly fixed on the 
ground, veiling his head at times and muttering very 
rapidly the words of the " supplications," there was some- 
thing many spectators may have noted as a thing new 
in their experience, for Aurelius, unlike his predecessors, 
took all this with absolute seriousness. The doctrine 
of the sanctity of kings, that, in the words of Tacitus, 
Princes are as Gods — Fri?icipes ins tar deorum esse — 
seemed to have taken a novel, because a literal, sense 
For Aurelius, indeed, the old legend of his descent 
from Numa, from Numa who had talked with the gods, 
meant much. Attached in very early years to the 
service of the altars, like many another noble youth, he 
was "observed to perform all his sacerdotal functions 
with a constancy and exactness unusual at that age ; was 
soon a master of the sacred music ; and had all the forms 
and ceremonies by heart." And now, as the emperor, 
who had not only a vague divinity about his person, 
but was actually the chief religious functionary of the 

L 



146 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap 

state, recited from time to time the forms of invocation, 
he needed not the help of the prompter, or cere?noniarws, 
who then approached, to assist him by whispering the 
appointed words in his ear. It was that pontifical 
abstraction which then impressed itself on Marius as 
the leading outward characteristic of Aurelius ; though 
to him alone, perhaps, in that vast crowd of observers, 
it was no strange thing, but a matter he had understood 
from of old. 

Some fanciful writers have assigned the origin of these 
triumphal processions to the mythic pomps of Dionysus, 
after his conquests in the East ; the very word Triimiph 
being, according to this supposition, only Thriambos — 
the Dionysiac Hymn. And certainly the younger of the 
two imperial " brothers," who, with the effect of a strong 
contrast, walked beside Aurelius, and shared the honours 
of the day, might well have reminded people of the deli- 
cate Greek god of flowers and wine. This new conqueror 
of the East was now about thirty-six years old, but with 
his scrupulous care for all the advantages of his person, 
and a soft curling beard powdered with gold, looked 
many years younger. One result of the more genial ele- 
ment in the wisdom of Aurelius had been that, amid most 
difficult circumstances, he had known throughout life 
how to act in union with persons of character very ahen 
from his own ; to be more than loyal to the colleague, 
the younger brother in empire, he had too lightly taken 
to himself, five years before, then an uncorrupt youth, 
" skilled in manly exercises and fitted for war." When 
Aurelius thanks the gods that a brother had fallen to his 
lot, whose character was a stimulus to the proper care of 
his own, one sees that this could only have happened in 
the way of an example, putting him on his guard against 
insidious faults. But it is with sincere amiability that 
the imperial writer, who was indeed little used to be 
ironical, adds that the lively respect and affection of tJie 



I 



XII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 147 

junior had often " gladdened " him. To be able to make 
his use of the flower, when the fruit perhaps was useless 
or poisonous : — that was one of the practical successes 
of his philosophy ; and his people noted, with a blessing, 
•'the concord of the two Augusti." 

The younger, certainly, possessed in full measure that 
charm of a constitutional freshness of aspect which may 
defy for a long time extravagant or erring habits of life ; 
a physiognomy, healthy-looking, cleanly, and firm, which 
seemed unassociable with any form of self- torment, and 
made one think of the muzzle of some young hound or 
roe, such as human beings invariably like to stroke — 
a physiognomy, in effect, with all the goodliness of 
animalism of the finer sort, though still wholly animal. 
The charm was that of the blond head, the unshrinking 
gaze, the warm tints : neither more nor less than one 
may see every English summer, in youth, manly enough, 
and with the stuff which makes brave soldiers, in spite of 
the natural kinship it seems to have with playthings and 
gay flowers. But innate in Lucius Verus there was 
that more than womanly fondness for fond things, 
which had made the atmosphere of the old city of 
Antioch, heavy wnth centuries of voluptuousness, a poison 
to him : he had come to love his delicacies best out of 
season, and would have gilded the very flowers. But with 
a wonderful power of self-obliteration, the elder brother 
at the capital had directed his procedure successfully, 
and allowed him, become now also the husband of 
his daughter Lucilla, the credit of a " Conquest," though 
Verus had certainly not returned a conqueror over him- 
self He had returned, as we know, w4th the plague in 
his company, along with many another strange creature 
of his folly ; and when the people saw him publicly feed- 
ing his favourite horse Fleet with almonds and sweet 
grapes, wearing the animal's image in gold, and finally 
building it a tomb, they felt, with some un-sentimental 



148 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap, 

misgiving, that he might revive the manners of Nero. — 
What if, in the chances of war, he should survive the 
protecting genius of that elder brother ? 

He was all himself to-day : and it was with much 
wistful curiosity that Marius regarded him. For Lucius 
Verus was, indeed, but the highly expressive type of a 
class, — the true son of his father, adopted by Hadrian. 
Lucius Verus the elder, also, had had the like strange 
capacity for misusing the adornments of life, with a 
masterly grace ; as if such misusing were, in truth, the 
quite adequate occupation of an intelligence, powerful, 
but distorted by cynical philosophy or some disappoint- 
ment of the heart. It was almost a sort of genius, of 
which there had been instances in the imperial purple : 
it was to ascend the throne, a few years later, in the 
person of one, now a hopeful httle lad at home in the 
palace ; and it had its following, of course, among the 
wealthy youth of Rome, who concentrated no inconsider- 
able force of shrewdness and tact upon minute details of 
attire and manner, as upon the one thing needful. 
Certainly, flowers were pleasant to the eye. ^ Such things 
had even their sober use, as making the outside of 
human life superficially attractive, and thereby promot- 
ing the first steps towards friendship and social amity. 
But what precise place could there be for Verus and his 
peculiar charm, in that Wisdom, that Order of divine 
Reason " reaching from end to end, strongly and sweetly 
disposing all things," from the vision of which Aurelius 
came down, so tolerant of persons Hke him ? Into such 
vision Marius too was certainly well-fitted to enter, yet, 
noting the actual perfection of Lucius Verus after his 
kind, his undeniable achievement of the select, in all 
minor things, felt, though with some suspicion of himself, 
that he entered into, and could understand, this other 
so dubious sort of character also. There was a voice in 
the theory he had brought to Rome with him which 



XII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 149 

whispered " nothing is either great nor small ; " as there 
were times when he could have thought that, as the 
" grammarian's " or the artist's ardour of soul may be 
satisfied by the perfecting of the theory of a sentence, or 
the adjustment of two colours, so his own life also might 
have been fulfilled by an enthusiastic quest after perfec- 
tion ; — say, in the flowering and folding of a toga. 

The emperors had burned incense before the image 
of Jupiter, arrayed in its most gorgeous apparel, amid 
sudden shouts from the people of Salve I??iperator I 
turned now from the living princes to the deity, as they 
discerned his countenance through the great open doors. 
The imperial brothers had deposited their crowns of 
myrtle on the richly embroidered lapcloth of the god ; 
and, with their chosen guests, sat down to a public feast 
in the temple itself. There followed what was, after all, 
the great event of the day : — an appropriate discourse, 
a discourse almost wholly de contemptu mundi, delivered 
in the presence of the assembled Senate, by the emperor 
Aurelius, who had thus, on certain rare occasions, con- 
descended to instruct his people, with the double 
authority of a chief pontiff and a laborious student of 
philosophy. In those lesser honours of the ovation^ 
there had been no attendant slave behind the emperors, 
to make mock of their effulgence as they went ; and it 
was as if with the discretion proper to a philosopher, and 
in fear of a jealous Nemesis, he had determined himself 
to protest in time against the vanity of all outward 
success. 

The Senate was assembled to hear the emperor's 
discourse in the vast hall of the Curia Julia. A crowd 
of high-bred youths idled around, or on the steps 
before the doors, with the marvellous toilets Marius had 
noticed in the Via Nova; in attendance, as usual, to 
learn by observation the minute points of senatorial 
procedure. Marius had already some acquaintance with 



I50 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

them, and passing on found himself suddenly in the 
presence of what was still the most august assembly the 
world had seen. Under Aurelius, ever full of vener- 
ation for this ancient traditional guardian of public 
religion, the Senate had recovered all its old dignity and 
independence. Among its members many hundreds in 
number, visibly the most distinguished of them all, 
Marius noted the great sophists or rhetoricians of the . 
day, in all their magnificence. The antique character 
of their attire, and the ancient mode of wearing it, still 
surviving with them, added to the imposing character 
of their persons, while they sat, with their staves of 
ivory in their hands, on their curule chairs — almost the 
exact pattern of the chair still in use in the Roman 
church when a ^\s\\o^ pontijicates at the divine offices — 
"tranquil and unmoved, with a majesty that seemed 
divine," as Marius thought, like the old Gaul of the 
Invasion. The rays of the early November sunset 
slanted full upon the audience, and made it necessary for 
the officers of the Court to draw the purple curtains over 
the windows, adding to the solemnity of the scene. In 
the depth of those warm shadows, surrounded by her 
ladies, the empress Faustina was seated to listen. 
The beautiful Greek statue of Victory, which since the 
days of Augustus had presided over the assemblies of 
the Senate, had been brought into the hall, and placed 
near the chair of . the emperor ; who, after rising to per- 
form a brief sacrificial service in its honour, bowing 
reverently to the assembled fathers left and right, took 
his seat and began to speak. 

There was a certain melancholy grandeur in the very 
simplicity or triteness of the theme : as it were the very 
quintessence of all the old Roman epitaphs, of all that 
was monumental in that city of tombs, layer upon layer 
of dead things and people. As if in the very fervour of 
disillusion, he seemed to be composing — wo-ire/) €7nypa<f>as 



XII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 151 

Xpoviov Kol 6X(i)v edu(jDv — the sepulchral titles of ages and 
whole peoples ; nay ! the very epitaph of the Hving Rome 
itself. The grandeur of the ruins of Rome, — heroism 
in ruin : it was under the influence of an imaginative 
anticipation of this, that he appeared to be speaking. 
And though the impression of the actual greatness of 
Rome on that day was but enhanced by the strain of 
contempt, falling with an accent of pathetic conviction 
from the emperor himself, and gaining from his pontifical 
pretensions the authority of a religious intimation, yet 
the curious interest of the discourse lay in this, that 
Marius, for one, as he listened, seemed to forsee a grass- 
grown Forum, the broken ways of the Capitol, and the 
Palatine hill itself in humble occupation. That impres- 
sion connected itself with what he had already noted of 
an actual change even then coming over Italian scenery. 
Throughout, he could trace something of a humour into 
which Stoicism at all times tends to fall, the tendency 
to cry, Abase yourselves I There was here the almost 
inhuman impassibility of one who had thought too closely 
on the paradoxical aspect of the love of posthumous fame. 
With the ascetic pride which lurks under all Platonism, 
resultant from its opposition of the seen to the unseen, 
as falsehood to truth — the imperial Stoic, like his true 
descendant, the hermit of the middle age, was ready, in 
no friendly humour, to mock, there in its narrow bed, 
the corpse which had made so much of itself in life. 
Marius could but contrast all that with his own Cyrenaic 
eagerness, just then, to taste and see and touch ; reflect- 
ing on the opposite issues deducible from the same text. 
" The world, within me and without, flows away like a 
river," he had said ; " therefore let me make the most 
of what is here and now." — " The world and the thinker 
upon it, are consumed like a flame/' said Aurelius, 
"therefore will I turn away my eyes from vanity: 
renounce : withdraw myself alike from ail affections." 



£52 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap 

He seemed tacitly to claim as a sort of personal dignity, 
that he was very familiarly versed in this view of things, 
and could discern a death's-head everywhere. Now 
and again Marius was reminded of the saying that 
"with the Stoics all people are the vulgar save them- 
selves ; " and at times the orator seemed to have for- 
gotten his audience, and to be speaking only to himself. 

" Art thou in love with men's praises, get thee into the 
very soul of them, and see ! — see what judges they be, 
even in those matters which concern themselves. 
Wouldst thou have their praise after death, bethink thee, 
that they who shall come hereafter, and with whom thou 
wouldst survive by thy great name, will be but as these, 
whom here thou hast found so hard to live with. For 
of a truth, the soul of him who is aflutter upon renown 
after death, presents not this aright to itself, that of 
all whose memory he would have each one will likewise 
very quickly depart, until memory herself be put out, as 
she journeys on by means of such as are themselves on 
the wing but for a while, and are extinguished in their 
turn. — Making so much of those thou wilt never see ! 
It is as if thou wouldst have had those who were before 
thee discourse fair things concerning thee. 

"To him, indeed, whose wit hath been whetted by 
true doctrine, that well-worn sentence of Homer sufficeth, 
to guard him against regret and fear. — 

Like the race of leaves 
The race of man is : — 

The wind in autumn strows 
The earth with old leaves : then the spring the woods with 
new endows. 

Leaves I little leaves'! — thy children, thy flatterers, thine 
enemies ! Leaves in the wind, those who would devote 
thee to darkness, who scorn or miscall thee here, even 
as they also whose great fame shall outlast them. For all 
the.se, and the like of them, are born indeed in the spring 



XII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 155 

season — eapos kTriyiyvcTai lopy : and soon a wind hath 
scattered them, and thereafter the wood peopleth itself 
again with another generation of leaves. And what 
is common to all of them is but the littleness of their 
lives : and yet wouldst thou love and hate, as if these 
things should continue for ever. / In a little while thine 
eyes also will be closed, and he on whom thou perchance 
hast leaned thyself be himself a burden upon another. / 

" Bethink thee often of the swiftness with which the 
things that are, or are even now coming to be, are swept 
past thee : that the very substance of them is but the 
perpetual motion of water : that there is almost nothing 
which continueth : of that bottomless depth of time, so 
close at thy side. Folly ! to be Ufted up, or sorrowful, 
or anxious, by reason of things like these ! Think of 
infinite matter, and thy portion — how tiny a particle, of 
it ! of infinite time, and thine own brief point there ; of 
destiny, and the jot thou art in it ; and yield thyself 
readily to the wheel of Clotho, to spin of thee what web 
she will. 

"As one casting a ball from his hand, the nature of 
things hath had its aim with every man, not as to the 
ending only, but the first beginning of his course, and 
passage thither. And hath the ball any profit of its 
rising, or loss as it descendeth again, or in its fall ? or 
the bubble, as it groweth or breaketh on the air ? or the 
flame of the lamp, from the beginning to the end of its 
brief story ? 

"All but at this present that future is, in which 
nature, who disposeth all things in order, will transform 
whatsoever thou now seest, fashioning from its substance 
somewhat else, and therefrom somewhat else in its turn, 
lest the world grow^ old. We are such stuff as dreams 
are made of — disturbing dreams. Awake, then ! and see 
thy dream as it is, in comparison with that erewhile it 
seemed to thee. 



f54 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

"And for me, especially, it were well to mind those 
many mutations of empire in time past ; therein peeping 
also upon the future, which must needs be of like 
species with what hath been, continuing ever within the 
rhythm and number of things which really are ; so that 
in forty years one may note of man and of his ways 
little less than in a thousand. Ah ! from this higher place, 
look we down upon the " shipwrecks and the calm ! 
Consider, for example, how the world went, under the 
emperor Vespasian. They are married and given in 
marriage, they breed children ; love hath its way with 
them ; they heap up riches for others or for themselves ; 
they are murmuring at things as then they are ; they are 
seeking- for great place ; crafty, flattering, suspicious, 
waiting upon the death of others : — festivals, business, 
war, sickness, dissolution : and now their whole life is no 
longer anywhere at all. Pass on to the reign of Trajan : 
all things continue the same : and that life also is no 
longer anywhere at all. Ah ! but look again, and 
consider, one after another, as it were the sepulchral 
inscriptions of all peoples and times, according to one 
pattern. — What multitudes, after their utmost striving 
— a little afterwards ! were dissolved again into their 
dust. 

"Think again of life as it was far offon the ancient 
world ; as it must be when we shall be gone ; as it is 
now among the wild heathen. How many have never 
heard your names and mine, or will soon forget them ! 
How soon may those who shout my name to-day begin 
to revile it, because glory, and the memory of men, and 
all things beside, are but vanity — a sand-heap under the 
senseless wind, the barking of dogs, the quarrelling of 
children, weeping incontinently upon their laughter. 

" This hasteth to be ; that other to have been : ol 
that which now cometh to be, even now somewhat hath 
been extinguished. And wilt thou make thy treasure of 



xu MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 155 

any one of these things ? It were as if one set his love 
upon the swallow, as it passeth out of sight through the 
air ! 

" Bethink thee often, in all contentions public and 
private, of those whom men have remembered by reason 
of their anger and vehement spirit — those famous rages, 
and the occasions of them — the great fortunes, and 
misfortunes, of men's strife of old. What are they all 
now, and the dust of their battles? Dust and ashes 
indeed ; a fable, a mythus, or not so much as that. ' Yes ! 
keep those before thine eyes who took this or that, the 
like of which happeneth to thee, so hardly ; were so 
querulous, so agitated. And where again are they? 
Wouldst thou have it not otherwise with thee ? 

" Consider how quickly all things vanish away — their 
bodily structure into the general substance ; the very 
memory of them into that great gulf and abysm of past 
thoughts. Ah ! 'tis on a tiny space of earth thou art 
creeping through life — a pigmy soul carrying a dead body 
to its grave. 

♦ " Let death put thee upon the consideration both of 
thy body and thy soul : what an atom of all matter hath 
been distributed to thee ; what a little particle of the 
universal mind. Turn thy body about, and consider 
what thing it is, and that which old age, and lust, and 
the languor of disease can make of it. Or come to its 
substantial and causal qualities, its very type : con- 
template that in itself, apart from the accidents of matter, 
and then measure also the span of time for which the 
nature of things, at the longest, will maintain that special 
type. Nay ! in the very principles and first constituents 
of things corruption hath its part — so much dust, 
humour, stench, and scraps of bone ! Consider that 
thy marbles are but the earth's callosities, thy gold and 
silver its /cecesj this silken robe but a worm's bedding, 
and thy purple an unclean fish. Ah ! and thy life's 



156 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

breath is not otherwise, as it passeth out of matters Hke 
these, into the like of them again. 

"For the one soul in things, taking matter like wax 
in the hands, moulds and remoulds — how hastily ! — 
beast, and plant, and the babe, in turn : and that which 
dieth hath not slipped out of the order of nature, but, 
remaining therein, hath also its changes there, disparting 
into those elements of which nature herself, and thou 
too, art compacted. She changes without murmuring. 
The oaken chest falls to pieces with no more complaining 
than when the carpenter fitted it together. If one told 
thee certainly that on the morrow thou shouldst die, or 
at the furthest on the day after, it would be no great 
matter to thee to die on the day after to-morrow, rather 
than to-morrow. Strive to think it a thing no greater 
that thou wilt die — not to-morrow, but a year, or two 
years, or ten years from to-day. 

" I find that all things are now as they were in the 
days of our buried ancestors — all things sordid in their 
elements, trite by long usage, and yet ephemeral. How 
ridiculous, then, how like a countryman in town, is he, 
who wonders at aught. Doth the sameness, the repeti- 
tion of the public shows, weary thee ? Even so doth 
that likeness of events in the spectacle of the world. 
And so must it be with thee to the end. For the wheel 
of the world hath ever the same motion, upward and 
downward, from generation to generation. When, when, 
shall time give place to eternity ? 

" If there be things which trouble thee thou canst 
put them away, inasmuch as they have their being but 
in thine own notion concerning them. Consider what 
death is, and how, if one does but detach from it the 
appearances, the notions, that hang about it, resting the 
eye upon it as in itself it really is, it must be thought of 
but as an effect of nature, and that man but a child 
whom an effect of nature shall affright. Nay ! not 



XII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 157 

function and effect 'A nature, only; but a thing profit- 
able also to herself 

"To cease from action — the ending of thine effort 
to think and do : there is no evil in that. Turn thy 
thought to the ages of man's life, boyhood, youth, 
maturity, old age : the change in every one of these also 
is a dying, but evil nowhere. Thou climbedst into the 
ship, thou hast made thy voyage and touched the shore : 
go forth now ! Be it into some other Kfe : the divine 
breath is everywhere, even there. Be it into forgetful- 
ness for ever : at least thou wilt rest from the beating of 
sensible' images upon thee, from the passions which 
pluck thee this way and that like an unfeeling toy, from 
those long marches of the intellect, from thy toilsomi 
ministry to the flesh. »^' 

"Art thou yet more than dust and ashes and bare 
bone — a name only, or not so much as that, which, 
also, is but whispering and a resonance, kept alive fron-i 
mouth to mouth of dying abjects who have hardly 
known themselves ; how much less thee, dead so 
long ago ! 

" When thou lookest upon a wise man, a lawyer, 1 
captain of war, think upon another gone. When thoi; 
seest thine own face in the glass, call up there beforr 
thee one of thine ancestors — one of those old Csesars 
Lo ! everywhere, thy double before thee ! Thereon, 
let the thought occur to thee : And where are they ? 
anywhere at all, for ever? And thou, thyself — how 
long? Art thou blind to that thou art — thy matter, 
now temporal ; and thy function, the nature of thy busi- 
ness ? Yet tarry, at least, till thou hast assimilated 
even these things to thine own proper essence, as a 
quick fire turneth into heat and light whatsoever be cast 
upon it. 

" As words once in use are antiquated to us, so is it 
with the names that were once on all men's lips : 



158 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap 

Camillus, Volesus, Leonnatus : then, in a little while, 
Scipio and Cato, and then Augustus, and then Hadrian, 
and then Antoninus Pius. How many great physicians 
who lifted wise brows at other men's sick-beds, have 
sickened and died ! Those wise Chaldeans, who fore- 
told, as a great matter, another man's last hour, have 
themselves been taken by surprise. Ay ! and all those 
others, in their pleasant places : those who doated on 
a Capreae like Tiberius, on their gardens, on the baths : 
Pythagoras and Socrates, who reasoned so closely 
upon immortality : Alexander, who used the lives of 
others as though his own should last for ever — he and 
his mule-driver alike now ! — one upon another. Well- 
nigh the whole court of Antoninus is extinct. Panthea 
and Pergamus sit no longer beside the sepulchre of 
their lord. The watchers over Hadrian's dust have 
slipped from his sepulchre. — It were jesting to stay 
longer. Did they sit there still, would the dead feel 
it ? or feehng it, be glad ? or glad, hold those watchers 
for ever? The time must come when they too shall be 
aged men and aged women, and decease, and fail from 
their places ; and what shift were there then for imperial 
service ? This too is but the breath of the tomb, and a 
skinful of dead men's blood. 

"Think again of those inscriptions, which belong 
not to one soul only, but to whole families : "Eor^aros 
Tov IStov yevovs : He was the last of his race. Nay ! of 
the burial of whole cities : Helice, Pompeii : of others, 
whose very burial-place is unknown. 

"Thou hast been a citizen in this wide city. Count 
not for how long, nor repine ; since that which sends 
thee hence is no unrighteous judge, no tyrant, but 
Nature, who brought thee hither ; as when a player 
leaves the stage at the bidding of the conductor who 
hired him. Sayest thou, ' I have not played five acts ' ? 
True ! but in human life, three acts only make some 



{ 



XII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 159 

times an entire play. That is the composer's business, 
not thine. Withdraw thyself with a good will ; for that 
too hath, perchance, a good will which dismisseth thee 
from thy part." 

The discourse ended almost in darkness, the evening 
having set in somewhat suddenly, with a heavy fall of 
snow. The torches, made ready to do him a useless 
honour, were of real service now, as the emperor was 
solemnly conducted home ; one man rapidly catching 
light from another — a long stream of moving lights 
across the white Forum, up the great stairs, to the 
palace. And, in effect, that night winter began, the 
hardest that had been known for a lifetime. The 
wolves came from the mountains ; and, led by the 
carrion scent, devoured the dead bodies which had been 
hastily buried during the plague, and, emboldened by 
their meal, crept, before the short day was well past, 
over the walls of the farmyards of the Campagna. The 
eagles were seen driving the flocks of smaller birds 
across the dusky sky. Only, in the city itself the winter 
was all the brighter for the contrast, among those who 
could pay for light and warmth. The habit-makers 
made a great sale of the spoil of all such furry creatures 
as had escaped wolves and eagles, for presents at the 
Saturnalia 3 and at no time had the winter roses from 
Carthage seemed more lustrously yellow and red. 



CHAPTER Xm 

THE "MISTRESS AND MOTHER" OF PALACES 

After that sharp, brief winter, the sun was ah-eady at 
work, softening leaf and bud, as you might feel by a 
faint sweetness in the air ; but he did his work behind 
an evenly white sky, against which the abode of the 
Caesars, its cypresses and bronze roofs, seemed like a 
picture in beautiful but melancholy colour, as Marius 
climbed the long flights of steps to be introduced to the 
emperor Aurelius. Attired in the newest mode, his 
legs wound in dainty fascice of white leather, with the 
heavy gold ring of the ingenims, and in his toga of 
ceremony, he still retained all his country freshness of 
complexion. The eyes of the "golden youth " of Rome 
were upon him as the chosen friend of CorneHus, 
and the destined servant of the emperor ; but not 
jealously. In spite of, perhaps partly because of, 
his habitual reserve of manner, he had become 
"the fashion," even among those who felt instinctively 
the irony which lay beneath that remarkable self- 
possession, as of one taking all things with a difference 
from other people, perceptible in voice, in expression, 
and even in his dress. // It was, in truth, the air of one 
who, entering vividly into life, and relishing to the full 
the delicacies of its intercourse, yet feels all the while, 
from the point of view of an ideal philosophy, that he is 



CHAP. XIII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN i6i 

but conceding reality to suppositions, choosing of his 
own will to walk in a day-dream, of the illusiveness 
of which he at least is aware. ^ 

In the house of the chief chamberlain Marius waited 
for the due moment of admission to the emperor's 
presence. He was admiring the peculiar decoration of 
the walls, coloured like rich old red leather. In the 
midst of one of them was depicted, under a trellis of 
fruit you might have gathered, the figure of a woman 
knocking at a door with wonderful reality of perspective. 
Then the summons came ; and in a few minutes, the 
etiquette of the imperial household being still a simple 
matter, he had passed the curtains which divided the 
central hall of the palace into three parts — three 
degrees of approach to the sacred person — and was. 
speaking to Aurelius himself; not in Greek, in which 
the emperor oftenest conversed with the learned, but, 
more familiarly, in Latin, adorned however, or dis- 
figured, by many a Greek phrase, as now and again 
French phrases have made the adornment of fashionable 
English. It was with real kindliness that Marcus 
Aurelius looked upon Marius, as a youth of great 
attainments in Greek letters and philosophy ; and he 
Hked also his serious expression, being, as we know, 
a believer in the doctrine of physiognomy — that, as he 
puts it, not love only, but every other affection of man's 
soul, looks out very plainly from the window of the 
eyes. 

The apartment in which Marius found himself was of 
ancient aspect, and richly decorated with the favourite 
toys of two or three generations of imperial collectors, 
now finally revised by the high connoisseurship of the 
Stoic emperor himself, though destined not much longer 
to remain together there. It is the repeated boast 
of Aurelius that he had learned from old Antoninus 
Pius to maintain authority without the constant use of 



i62 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

guards, in a robe woven by the handmaids of his own 
consort, with no processional hghts or images, and " that a 
prince may shrink himself ahiiost into the figure of a private 
gentleman." And yet, again as at his first sight of him, 
Marius was struck by the profound religiousness of the 
surroundings of the imperial presence. The effect 
might have been due in part to the very simplicity, 
the discreet and scrupulous simplicity, of the central 
figure in this splendid abode ; but Marius could not 
forget that he saw before him not only the head of 
the Roman religion, but one who might actually have 
claimed something like divine worship, had he cared to 
do so. Though the fantastic pretensions of Caligula 
had brought some contempt on that claim, which had 
become almost a jest under the ungainly Claudius, yet, 
from Augustus downwards, a vague divinity had seemed 
to surround the Csesars even in this life; and the 
peculiar character of Aurelius, at once a ceremonious 
polytheist never forgetful of his pontifical calling, 
and a philosopher whose mystic speculation encircled 
him with a sort of saintly halo, had restored to his 
person, without his intending it, something of that 
divine prerogative, or prestige. Though he would 
never allow the immediate dedication of altars to 
himself, yet the image of his Genius — his spirituality 
or celestial counterpart — was placed among those of 
the deified princes of the past; and his family, 
including Faustina and the young Commodus, was 
spoken of as the " holy " or " divine " house. Many a 
Roman courtier agreed with the barbarian chief, who^ 
after contemplating a predecessor of Aurelius, withdrew 
from his presence with the exclamation: — "I have 
seen a god to-day ! " The very roof of his house, rising 
into a pediment or gable, like that of the sanctuary of a 
god, the laurels on either side its doorway, the chaplet 
gf oak-leaves above, seemed to designate the place for 



XIII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 163 

religious veneration. And notwithstanding all this, the 
household of Aurelius was singularly modest, with none 
of the wasteful expense of palaces after the fashion of 
Lewis the Fourteenth ; the palatial dignity being felt 
only in a peculiar sense of order, the absence of all that 
was casual, of vulgarity and discomfort. A merely 
official residence of his predecessors, the Palatine had 
become the favourite dwelling-place of Aurelius ; its 
many-coloured memories suiting, perhaps, his pensive 
character, and the crude splendours of Nero and Hadrian 
being now subdued by time. The window-less Roman 
abode must have had much of what to a modern would 
be gloom. How did the children, one wonders, endure 
houses with so Httle escape for the eye into the world 
outside ? x\urelius, who had altered little else, choosing 
to live there, in a genuine homeliness, had shifted and 
made the most of the level lights, and broken out a 
quite medieval window here and there, and the clear 
daylight, fully appreciated by his youthful visitor, made 
pleasant shadows among the objects of the imperial 
collection. Some of these, indeed, by reason of their 
Greek simplicity and grace, themselves shone out like 
spaces of a purer, early light, amid the splendours of the 
Roman manufacture. 

Though he looked, thought Marius, like a man who 
did not sleep enough, he was abounding and bright 
to-day, after one of those pitiless headaches, which since 
boyhood had been the " thorn in his side," challenging 
the pretensions of his philosophy to fortify one in humble 
endurances. At the first moment, to Marius, remem- 
bering the spectacle of the emperor in ceremony, it was 
almost bewildering to be in private conversation with 
him. There was much in the philosophy of Aurelius — 
much consideration of mankind at large, of great bodies, 
aggregates and generalities, after the Stoic manner — 
which, on a nature less rich than his, might have 



i64 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap 

acted as an inducement to care for people in inverse 
proportion to their nearness to him. That has some- 
times been the result of the Stoic cosmopolitanism. 
Aurelius, however, determined to beautify by all means, 
great or little, a doctrine which had in it some potential 
sourness, had brought ,11 the quickness of his intelligence, 
and long years of obs^. /vation, to bear on the conditions 
of social intercourse. He had early determined "not to 
make business an excn ^e to decline the offices of 
humanity — not to pretend to be too much occupied 
with important affairs to concede what life with others 
may hourly demand ; " and with such success, that, in 
an age which made much of the finer points of that 
intercourse, it was felt that the mere honesty of his con- 
versation was more pleasing than other men's flattery. 
His agreeableness to his young visitor to-day was, in 
truth, a blossom of the same wisdom which had made 
of Lucius Verus really a brother — the wisdom of not being 
exigent with men, any more than with fruit-trees (it is 
his own favourite figure) beyond their nature. And 
there was another person, still nearer to him, regarding 
whom this wisdom became a marvel, of equity — of 
charity. 

The centre of a group of princely children, in the 
same apartment with Aurelius, amid all the refined 
intimacies of a modern home, sat the empress Faustina, 
warming her hands over a fire. With her long fingers 
lighted up red by the glowing coals of the brazier Marius 
looked close upon the most beautiful woman in the 
world, who was also the great paradox of the age, among her 
boys and girls. As has been truly said of the numerous 
representations of her in art, so in life, she had the air 
of one currous, restless, to enter into conversation with th^ 
first comer. She had certainly the power of stimulating 
a very ambiguous sort of curiosity about herself. And 
Marius found this enigmatic point in her expression, 



XIII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 165 

that even after seeing her many times he could never 
precisely recall her features in absence. The lad of 
six years, looking older, who stood beside her, im- 
patiently plucking a rose to pieces over the hearth, was, 
in outward appearance, his father — the young Verissimus 
— over again ; but with a certain feminine length of 
feature, and with all his mother's alertness, or license, of 
gaze. 

Yet rumour knocked at every door and window of 
the imperial house regarding the adulterers who knocked 
at them, or quietly left their lovers' garlands there. 
Was not that likeness of the husband, in the boy beside 
her, really the effect of a shameful magic, in which the 
blood of the murdered gladiator, his true father, had 
been an ingredient ? Were the tricks for deceiving 
husbands which the Roman poet describes, really hers, 
and her household an efficient school of all the arts of 
furtive love ? Or, was the husband too aware, like 
every one beside ? Were certain sudden deaths which 
happened there, really the work of apoplexy, or the 
plague? 

The man whose ears, whose soul, those rumours 
were meant to penetrate, was, however, faithful to his 
sanguine and optimist philosophy, to his determination 
that the world should be to him simply what the higher 
reason preferred to conceive it ; and the life's journey 
Aurelius had made so far, though involving much moral 
and intellectual loneliness, had been ever in affectionate 
and helpful contact with other wayfarers, very unlike him- 
self. Since his days of earliest childhood in the Lateran 
gardens, he seemed to himself, blessing the gods for it 
after deliberate survey, to have been always surrounded 
by kinsmen, friends, servants, of exceptional virtue. 
From the great Stoic idea, that we are all fellow-citizens 
of one city, he had derived a tenderer, a more equitable 
estimate than was common among Stoics, of the eternal 



i66 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap 

shortcomings of men and women. Considerations that 
might tend to the sweetening of his temper it was his daily 
care to store away, with a kind of philosophic pride in the 
thought that no one took more good-naturedly than he 
the " oversights " of his neighbours. For had not Plato 
taught (it was not paradox, but simple truth of experience) 
that if people sin, it is because they know no better, and 
are "under the necessity of their own ignorance"? 
Hard to himself, he seemed at times, doubtless, to decline 
too softly upon unworthy persons. Actually, he came 
thereby upon many a useful instrument. The empress 
Faustina he would seem at least to have kept, by a con- 
straining affection, from becoming altogether what most 
people have believed her, and won in her (we must take 
him at his word in the "Thoughts," abundantly confirmed 
by letters, on both sides, in his correspondence with 
Cornelius Fronto) a consolation, the more secure, per- 
haps, because misknown of others. Was the secret of 
her actual blamelessness, after all, with him who has at 
least screened her name ? At all events, the one thing 
quite certain about her, besides her extraordinary beauty, 
is her sweetness to himself. 

No ! The wise, who had made due observation on the 
trees of the garden, would not expect to gather grapes 
of thorns or fig-trees : and he was the vine, putting forth 
his genial fruit, by natural law, again and again, after his 
kind, whatever use people might make of it. Certainly, 
his actual presence never lost its power, and Faustina 
was glad in it to-day, the birthday of one of her children, 
a boy who stood at her knee holding in his fingers 
tenderly a tiny silver trumpet, one of his birthday gifts. 
— ^" For my part, unless I conceive my hurt to be such, 
I have no hurt at all," — boasts the w^ould-be apathetic 
emperor: — "aijd how I care to conceive of the thing 
rests with me.'' Yet when his children fall sick or die, 
this pretence breaks down, and he is broken-hearted -• 



xiii MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 167 

and one of the charms of certain of his letters still 
extant, is his reference to those childish sicknesses. — 
" On my return to Lorium," he writes, " I found my 
little lady — doinnulam 7?iea??t — in a fever ; " and again, 
in a letter to one of the most serious of men, " You will 
be glad to hear that our little one is better, and running 
about the room — parvolam nostram melius valere et 
ifitra cubicuhwi discurrere." 

The young Commodus had departed from the cham- 
ber, anxious to witness the exercises of certain gladiators, 
having a native taste for such company, inherited, accord- 
ing to popular rumour, from his true father — anxious 
also to escape from the too impressive company of the 
gravest and sweetest specimen of old 'age Marius had 
ever seen, the tutor of the imperial children, who had 
arrived to offer his birthday congratulations, and now, 
very familiarly and affectionately, made a part of the 
group, falling on the shoulders of the emperor, kissing 
the empress Faustina on the face, the little ones on 
the face and hands. Marcus Cornelius Fronto, the 
" Orator," favourite teacher of the emperor's youth, 
afterwards his most trusted counsellor, and now the 
undisputed occupant of the sophistic throne, whose 
equipage, elegantly mounted with silver, Marius had 
seen in the streets of Rome, had certainly turned his 
many personal gifts to account with a good fortune, 
remarkable even in that age, so indulgent to professors 
or rhetoricians. The gratitude of the emperor Aurelius, 
always generous to his teachers, arranging their very 
quarrels sometimes, for they were not always fair to one 
another, had helped him to a really great place in the 
world. But his sumptuous appendages, including the 
villa and gardens of Maecenas, had been borne with an 
air perfectly becoming, by the professor of a philosophy 
which, even in its most accomplished and elegant phase, 
pre-supposed a gentle contempt for such things. With 



i68 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

an intimate practical knowledge of manners, physiog- 
nomies, smiles, disguises, flatteries, and courtly tricks of 
every kind — a whole accomplished rhetoric of daily life 
— he applied them all to the promotion of humanity, and 
especially of men's family affection. Through a long life 
of now eighty years, he had been, as it were, surrounded 
by the gracious and soothing air of his own eloquence — 
the fame, the echoes, of it — Hke warbling birds, or mur- 
muring bees. Setting forth in that fine medium the best 
ideas of matured pagan philosophy, he had become the 
favourite " director " of noble youth. 

Yes ! it was the one instance Marius, always eagerly 
on the look-out for such, had yet seen of a perfectly 
tolerable, perfectly beautiful, old age — an old age in 
which there seemed, to one who perhaps habitually over- 
valued the expression of youth, nothing to be regretted, 
nothing really lost, in what years had taken away. The 
wise old man, whose blue eyes and fair skin were so 
delicate, uncontaminate and clear, would seem to have 
replaced carefully and consciously each natural trait of 
youth, as it departed from him, by an equivalent grace 
of culture ; and had the blitheness, the placid cheerful- 
ness, as he had also the infirmity, the claim on stronger 
people, of a delightful child. And yet he seemed to be 
but awaiting his exit from life — that moment with which 
the Stoics were almost as much preoccupied as the 
Christians, however differently — and set Marius pondering 
on the contrast between a placidity like this, at eighty 
years, and the sort of desperateness he was aw^are of in 
his own manner of entertaining that thought. His 
infirmities nevertheless had been painful and long- 
continued, with losses of children, of pet grandchildren 
What with the crowd, and the wretched streets, it was a 
sign of affection which had cost him something, for the old 
man to leave his own house at all that day ; and he was 
glad of the emperor's support, as he moved from place 



XIII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 169 

to place among the children he protests so often to have 
loved as his own. 

For a strange piece of literary good fortune, at the 
beginning of the present century, has set free the long- 
buried fragrance of this famous friendship of the old 
world, from below a valueless later manuscript, in a 
series of letters, wherein the two writers exchange, for 
the most part their evening thoughts, especially at family 
anniversaries, and with entire intimacy, on their children, 
on the art of speech, on all the various subtleties of the 
" science of images " — rhetorical images — above all, oi 
course, on sleep and. matters of health. They are full of 
mutual admiration of each other's eloquence, restless in 
absence till tliey see one another again, noting, character- 
istically, their very dreams of each other, expecting the 
day which will terminate the office, the business or duty, 
which separates them — "as superstitious people watch 
for the star, at the rising of which they may break their 
fast." To one of the wTiters, to Aurelius, the correspond- 
ence was sincerely of value. We see him once reading 
his letters with genuine deHght on going to rest. Fronto 
seeks to deter his pupil from writing in Greek. — Why 
buy, at great cost, a foreign wine, inferior to that from 
one's own vineyard? Aurelius, on the other hand, with 
an extraordinary innate susceptibility to words — /a parole 
pour la parole, as the French say — despairs, in presence 
of Fronto's rhetorical perfection. 

Like the modern visitor to the Capitoline and some 
other museums, Fronto had been struck, pleasantly 
struck, by the family likeness among the Antonines ; and 
it was part of his friendship to make much of it, in the 
case of the children of Faustina. "Well! I have seen 
the little ones," he writes to Aurelius, then, apparently, 
absent from them : "I have seen the little ones — 
the pleasantest sight of my life ; for they are as like 
yourself as could possibly be. It has well repaid me fot 



I70 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

my journey over that slippery road, and up those steep 
rocks ; for I beheld you, not simply face to face before 
me, but, more generously, whichever way I turned, to 
my right and my left. For the rest, I found them, 
Heaven be thanked ! with healthy cheeks and lusty 
voices. One was holding a slice of white bread, like a 
king's son ; the other a crust of brown bread, as becomes 
the offspring of a philosopher. I pray the gods to have 
both the sower and the seed in their keeping ; to watch 
over this field wherein the ears of corn are so kindly 
alike. Ah ! I heard too their pretty voices, so sweet that 
in the childish prattle of one and the other I seemed 
somehow to be listening — yes ! in that chirping of your 
pretty chickens — to the limped and harmonious notes of 
your own oratory. Take care ! you will find me growing 
independent, having those I could love in your place : — 
love, on the surety of my eyes and ears." 

^^ Magistro meo saiutem/'^ replies the Emperor, "I 
too have seen my httle ones in your sight of them ; as, 
also, I saw yourself in reading your letter. It is that 
charming letter forces me to write thus : " with reitera- 
tions of affection, that is, which are continual in these 
letters, on both sides, and which may strike a modern 
reader perhaps as fulsome ; or, again, as having some- 
thing in common with the old Judaic unction of friend- 
ship. They were certainly sincere. 

To one of those children Fronto had now brought 
the birthday gift of the silver trumpet, upon which he 
ventured to blow softly now and again, turning away with 
eyes delighted at the sound, when he thought the old 
man was not listening. It was the well-worn, valetudi- 
narian subject of sleep, on which Fronto and Aurelius 
were talking together ; Aurelius always feeling it a 
burden, Fronto a thing of magic capacities, so that he 
had written an encoi7iium in its praise, and often by 
ingenious arguments recommends his imperial pupil not 



XIII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 171 

to be sparing of it. To-day, with his younger listeners 
in mind, he had a story to tell about it : — 

" They say that our father Jupiter, when he ordered 
the world at the beginning, divided time into two parts 
exactly equal : the one part he clothed with light, the 
other with darkness : he called them Day and Night ; and 
he assigned rest to the night and to day the work of 
life. At that time Sleep was not yet born and men 
passed the whole of their lives awake : only, the quiet of 
the night was ordained for them, instead of sleep. But 
it came to pass, little by little, being that the minds of 
men are restless, that they carried on their business 
alike by night as by day, and gave no part at all to 
repose. And Jupiter, when he perceived that even in 
the night-time they ceased not from trouble and disputa- 
tion, and that even the courts of law remained open (it 
was the pride of Aurelius, as Fronto knew, to be assiduous 
in those courts till far into the night) resolved to appoint 
one of his brothers to be the overseer of the night and 
have authority over man's rest. But Neptune pleaded 
in excuse the gravity of his constant charge of the seas, 
and Father Dis the difficulty of keeping in subjection 
the spirits below ; and Jupiter, having taken counsel with 
the other gods, perceived that the practice of nightly 
vigils was somewhat in favour. It was then, for the most 
part, that Juno gave birth to her children : Minerva, 
the mistress of all art and craft, loved the midnight 
lamp : Mars delighted in the darkness for his plots 
and sallies ; and the favour of Venus and Bacchus was 
with those who roused by night. Then it was that 
Jupiter formed the design of creating Sleep ; and he 
added him to the number of the gods, and gave him the 
charge over night and rest, putting into his hands the 
keys of human eyes. With his own hands he mingled 
the juices wherewith Sleep should soothe the hearts of 
mortals — herb of Enjoyment and herb of Safety, gathered 



172 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

from a grove in Heaven ; and, from the meadows' of 
Acheron, the herb of Death ; expressing from it one 
single drop only, no bigger than a tear one might hide. 
'With this juice,' he said, 'pour slumber upon the 
eyelids of mortals. So soon as it hath touched them 
they will lay themselves down motionless, under thy 
power. But be not afraid : they shall revive, and in 3 
while stand up again upon their feet' Thereafter, 
Jupiter gave wings to Sleep, attached, not, like Mercury's, 
to his heels, but to his shoulders, like the wings of Love. 
For he said, ' It becomes thee not to approach men's 
eyes as with the noise of chariots, and the rushing of a 
swift courser, but in placid and merciful flight, as upon 
the wings of a swallow — nay ! with not so much as the 
flutter of the dove.' Besides all this, that he might be 
yet pleasanter to men, he committed to him also a 
multitude of blissful dreams, according to every man's 
desire. One watched his favourite actor; another 
listened to the flute, or guided a charioteer in the race : 
in his dream, the soldier was victorious, the general was 
borne in triumph, the wanderer returned home. Yes I 
— and sometimes those dreams come true ! " 

Just then Aurelius was summoned to make the birth- 
day offerings to his household gods. A heavy curtain of 
tapestry was drawn back ; and beyond it Marius gazed 
for a few moments into the Larariuj?i, or imperial chapel. 
A patrician youth, in white habit, was in waiting, with a 
little chest in his hand containing incense for the use of 
the altar. On richly carved consoles^ or side boards, around 
this narrow chamber, were arranged the rich apparatus 
of worship and the golden or gilded images, adorned to- 
day with fresh flowers, among them that image of Fortune 
from the apartment of Antoninus Pius, and such of the 
emperor's own teachers as were gone to their rest. A 
dim fresco on the wall commemorated the ancient piety 
of Lucius Albinius, who in flight from Rome on the 



XIII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 173 

morrow of a great disaster, overtaking certain priests on 
foot with their sacred utensils, descended from the wagon 
in which he rode and yielded it to the ministers of the 
gods. As he ascended into the chapel the emperor 
paused, and with a grave but friendly look at his young 
visitor, delivered a parting sentence, audible to him 
alone : hnitation is the most acceptable part of worship : 
the gods had much rather majikind should resemble than 
flatter the?n : — Make sure that those to whom you come 
nearest be the happier by your presence 1 

It was the very spirit of the scene and the hour — the 
hour Marius had spent in the imperial house. How 
temperate, how tranquillising ! what humanity ! Yet, as 
he left the eminent company concerning whose ways of 
life at home he had been so youthfully curious, and 
sought, after his manner, to determine the main trait 
in all this, he had to confess that it was a sentiment 
of mediocrity, though of a mediocrity for once really 
goidea 



I 



CHAPTER XIV 



MANLY AMUSEMENT 



During the Eastern war there came a moment when 
schism in the empire had seemed possible through the 
defection of Lucius Verus ; when to Aurehus it had also 
seemed possible to confirm his allegiance by no less a 
gift than his beautiful daughter Lucilla, the eldest of his 
children — the dotfmula^ probably, of those letters. The 
little lady, grown now to strong and stately maidenhood, 
had been ever something of the good genius, the better 
soul, to Lucius Verus, by the law of contraries, her 
somewhat cold and apathetic modesty acting as counter- 
foil to the young man's tigrish fervour. Conducted to 
Ephesus, she had become his wife by form of civil 
marriage, the more solemn wedding rites being deferred 
till their return to Rome. 

The ceremony of the Co7ifarreation, or religious 
marriage, in which bride and bridegroom partook to- 
gether of a certain mystic bread, was celebrated 
accordingly, with due pomp, early in the spring; 
Aurelius himself assisting, with much domestic feehng. 
A crowd of fashionable people filled the space before 
the entrance to the apartments of Lucius on the Palatine 
hill, richly decorated for the occasion, commenting, not 
always quite delicately, on the various details of the 
rite, which only a favoured few succeeded in actually 



CHAP. XIV MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 175 

witnessing. " She comes ! " Marius could hear them 
say, " escorted by her young brothers : it is the young 
Commodus who carries the torch of white-thorn-wood, 
the Uttle basket of work-things, the toys for the children :" 
— and then, after a watchful pause, " she is winding the 
woollen thread round the doorposts. Ah ! I see the 
marriage-cake : the bridegroom presents the fire and 
water." Then, in a longer pause, was heard the chorus, 
Thalassie ! Thalassie ! and for just a few moments, in 
the strange light of many wax tapers at noonday, Marius 
could see them both, side by side, while the bride was 
lifted over the doorstep : Lucius Verus heated and 
handsome — the pale, impassive Lucilla looking very long 
and slender, in her closely folded yellow veil, and high 
nuptial crown. 

As Marius turned away, glad to escape from the 
pressure of the crowd, he found himself face to face with 
Cornelius, an infrequent spectator on occasions such as 
this. It was a relief to depart with him — so fresh and 
quiet he looked, though in all his splendid equestrian 
array in honour of the ceremony — from the garish heat of 
the marriage scene. The reserve which had puzzled Marius 
so much on his first day in Rome, was but an instance of 
many, to him wholly unaccountable, avoidances alike of 
things and persons, which must certainly mean that an 
intimate companionship would cost him something in the 
way of seemingly indifferent amusements. Some inward 
standard Marius seemed to detect there (though wholly 
unable to estimate its nature) of distinction, selection, 
refusal, amid the various elements of the fervid and 
corrupt life across which they were moving together : — 
some secret, constraining motive, ever on the alert at eye 
and ear, which carried him through Rome as under a 
charm, so that Marius could not but think of that figure 
of the white bird in the market-place as undoubtedly 
made true of him. And Marius was still full of admira- 



176 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN CHAr 

tion for this companion, who had known hov/ to make 
himself very pleasant to him. Here was the clear, cold 
corrective, which the fever of his present life demanded. 
Without it, he would have felt alternately suffocated and 
exhausted by an existence, at once so gaudy and over- 
done, and yet so intolerably empty ; in which people, 
even at their best, seemed only to be brooding, Uke the 
wise emperor himself, over a world's disillusion. For 
with all the severity of Cornelius, there was such a breeze 
of hopefulness — freshness and hopefulness, as of new 
morning, about him. For the most part, as I said, those 
refusals, that reserve of his, seemed unaccountable. But 
there were cases where the unknown monitor acted in a 
direction with which the judgment, or instinct, of Marius 
himself wholly concurred ; the effective decision of 
Cornelius strengthening him further therein, as by a 
kind of outwardly embodied conscience. And the 
entire drift of his education determined him, on one 
point at least, to be wholly of the same mind with this 
peculiar friend (they two, it might be, together, against 
the world !) when, alone of a whole company of brilliant 
youth, he had withdrawn from his appointed place in 
the amphitheatre, at a grand public show, which 
after an interval of many months, was presented 
there, in honour of the nuptials of Lucius Verus and 
Lucilla. 

And it was still to the eye, through visible movement 
and aspect, that the character, or genius of Cornelius 
made itself felt by Marius; even as on that afternoon 
when he had girt on his armour, among the expressive 
lights and shades of the dim old villa at the roadside, and 
every object of his knightly array had seemed to be but 
sign or symbol of some other thing far beyond it. For, con- 
sistently with his really poetic temper, all influence reached 
Marius, even more exclusively than he was aware, through 
the medium of sense. From Flavian, in that brief early 



XIV MARIUS THE EPICUREAN I77 

summer of his existence, he had derived a powerful 
impression of the " perpetual flux " : he had caught 
there, as in cipher or symbol, or low whispers more 
effective than any definite language, his own Cyrenaic 
philosophy, presented thus, for the first time, in an 
image or person, with much attractiveness, touched 
also, consequently, with a pathetic sense of personal 
sorrow : — a concrete image, the abstract equivalent of 
which he could recognise afterwards, when the agitating 
personal influence had settled down for him, clearly 
enough, into a theory of practice. But of what possible 
intellectual formula could this mystic Cornelius be the 
sensible exponent; seeming, as he did, to live ever in 
close relationship with, and recognition of, a mental 
view, a source of discernment, a light upon his way, 
which had certainly not yet sprung up for Marius? 
Meantime, the discretion of Cornelius, his energetic 
clearness and purity, were a charm, rather physical than 
moral : his exquisite correctness of spirit, at all events, 
accorded so perfectly with the regular beauty of his 
person, as to seem to depend upon it. And wholly 
diff'erent as was this later friendship, with its exigency, 
its warnings, its restraints, from the feverish attachment 
to Flavian, which had made him at times like an un- 
easy slave, still, Hke that, it was a reconciliation to the 
world of sense, the visible world. From the hopeful- 
ness of this gracious presence, all visible things around 
him, even the commonest objects of everyday life — if 
they but stood together to warm their hands at the same 
fire — took for him a new poetry, a delicate fresh bloom, 
and interest. It was as if his bodily eyes had been 
indeed mystically washed, renewed, strengthened. 

And how eagerly, with what a light heart, would 
Flavian have taken his place in the amphitheatre, among 
the youth of his own age ! with what an appetite for every 
detail of the entertainment, and its various accessories : — 

N 



178 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

the sunshine, filtered into soft gold by the vela^ 
with their serpentine patterning, spread over the more 
select part of the company ; the Vestal virgins, taking 
their privilege of seats near the empress Faustina, who 
sat there in a maze of double-coloured gems, changing, 
as she moved, like the waves of the sea ; the cool circle 
of shadow, in which the wonderful toilets of the fashion- 
able told so effectively around the blazing arena, covered 
again and again during the many hours' show, with clean 
sand for the absorption of certain great red patches 
there, by troops of white-shirted boys, for whom the 
good-natured audience provided a scramble of nuts 
and small coin, flung to them over a trellis-work of 
silver-gilt and amber, precious gift of Nero, while a rain 
of flowers and perfume fell over themselves, as they 
paused between the parts of their long feast upon the 
spectacle of animal suffering. 

During his sojourn at Ephesus, Lucius Verus had 
readily become a patron, patron or protege, of the great 
goddess of Ephesus, the goddess of hunters ; and the 
show, celebrated by way of a compliment to him to-day, 
was to present some incidents of her story, where she 
figures almost as the genius of madness, in animals, or 
in the humanity wdiich comes in contact with them. 
The entertainment would have an element of old Greek 
revival in it, welcome to the taste of a learned and 
Hellenising society ; and, as Lucius Verus was in some 
sense a lover of animals, was to be a display of animals 
mainly. There would be real wild and domestic creatures, 
all of rare species ; and a real slaughter. On so happy 
an occasion, it was hoped, the elder emperor might even 
concede a point, and a living criminal fall into the jaws 
of the wild beasts. And the spectacle was, certainly, to 
end in the destruction, by one mighty shower of arrows, 
of a hundred lions, " nobly" provided by AureHus himself 
for the amusement of his people. — Tam magnanimus fuit I 



XIV MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 179 

The arena, decked and in order for the first scene, 
looked delightfully fresh, re-inforcing on the spirits of 
the audience the actual freshness of the morning, which 
at this season still brought the dew. Along the subter- 
ranean ways that led up to it, the sound of an advancing 
chorus was heard at last, chanting the words of a sacred 
song, or hymn to Diana ; for the spectacle of the amphi- 
theatre was, after all, a religious occasion. To its grim 
acts of bloodshedding a kind of sacrificial character 
still belonged in the view of certain religious casuists, 
tending conveniently to soothe the humane sensibilities 
of so pious an emperor as Aurelius, who, in his fraternal 
complacency, had consented to. preside over the shows. 

Artemis or Diana, as she may be understood in the 
actual development of her worship, was, indeed, the 
symbolical expression of two allied yet contrasted elements 
of human temper and experience — man's amity, and also 
his enmity, towards the wild creatures, when they were 
still, in a certain sense, his brothers. She is the com- 
plete, and therefore highly complex, representative of a 
state, in which man was still much occupied with 
animals, not as his flock, or as his servants after the 
pastoral relationship of our later, orderly world, but 
rather as his equals, on friendly terms or the reverse, — 
a state full of primeval sympathies and antipathies, of 
rivalries and common wants — while he watched, and 
could enter into, the humours of those "younger 
brothers," with an intimacy, the " survivals " of which 
in a later age seem often to have had a kind of madness 
about them. Diana represents alike the bright and the 
dark side of such relationship. But the humanities of 
that relationship were all forgotten to-day in the excite- 
ment of a show, in which mere cruelty to animals, theii 
useless suffering and death, formed the main point of 
interest. People watched their destruction, batch after 
batch, in a not particularly inventive fashion ; though 



i8o MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap 

it was expected that the animals themselves, as living 
creatures are apt to do when hard put to it, would 
become inventive, and make up, by the fantastic 
accidents of their agony, for the deficiencies of an age 
fallen behind in this matter of manly amusement. It 
was as a Deity of Slaughter — the Taurian goddess who 
demands the sacrifice of the shipwrecked sailors thrown 
on her coasts — the cruel, moonstruck huntress, who 
brings not only sudden death, but rabies^ among the 
wild creatures that Diana was to be presented, in the 
person of a famous courtesan. The aim at an actual 
theatrical illusion, after the first introductory scene, was 
frankly surrendered to the display of the animals, arti- 
ficially stimulated and maddened to attack each other. 
And as Diana was also a special protectress of new-born 
creatures, there would be a certain curious interest in 
the dexterously contrived escape of the young from their 
mothers' torn bosoms ; as many pregnant animals as 
possible being carefully selected for the purpose. 

The time had been, and was to come again, when 
the pleasures of tne amphitheatre centered in a similar 
practical joking upon human beings. What more in- 
genious diversion had stage manager ever contrived 
than that incident, itself a practical epigram never to 
be forgotten, when a criminal, who, like slaves and 
animals, had no rights, was compelled to present the 
part of Icarus ; and, the wings failing him in due course, 
had fallen into a pack of hungry bears ? For the 
long shows of the amphitheatre were, so to speak, the 
novel-reading of that age — a current help provided for 
sluggish imaginations, in regard, for instance, to grisly 
accidents, such as might happen to one's self; but with 
every facility for comfortable inspection. Scaevola might 
watch his own hand, consuming, crackling, in the fire, 
in the person of a culprit, willing to redeem his life by 
an act so delightful to the eyes, the very ears, of a curious 



XIV MARIUS THE EPICUREAN l8l 

public. If the part of Marsyas was called for, there was 
a criminal condemned to lose his skin. It might be 
almost edifying to study minutely the expression of his 
face, while the assistants corded and pegged him to the 
bench, cunningly ; the servant of the law waiting by, 
who, after one short cut with his knife, would slip the 
man's leg from his skin, as neatly as if it were a stocking 
— dififiesse in providing the due amount of suffering for 
wrong-doers only brought to its height in Nero's living 
bonfires. But then, by making his suffering ridiculous, 
you enlist against the sufferer, some real, and all would- 
be manliness, and do much to stifle any false sentiment 
of compassion. The philosophic emperor, having no 
great taste for sport, and asserting here a personal scruple, 
had greatly changed all that; had provided that nets 
should be spread under the dancers on the tight-rope, 
and buttons for the swords of the gladiators. But the 
gladiators were still there. Their bloody contests had, 
under the form of a popular amusement, the efficacy of 
a human sacrifice ; as, indeed, the whole system of the 
public shows was understood to possess a religious im- 
port. Just at this point, certainly, the judgment of 
Lucretius on pagan religion is without reproach — 

Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum. 

And Marius, weary and indignant, feeling isolated in 
the great slaughter-house, could not but observe that, 
in his habitual complaisance to Lucius Verus who, with 
loud shouts of applause from time to time, lounged be- 
side him, Aurelius had sat impassibly through all the 
hours Marius himself had remained there. For the most 
part indeed, the emperor had actually averted his eyes 
from the show, reading, or writing on matters of public 
business, but had seemed, after all, indifferent. He was 
revolving, perhaps, that old Stoic paradox of the hnper- 
ceptibility of pai?i ; which might serve as an excuse, 



i83 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap 

should those savage popular humours ever again turn 
against men and women. Marius remembered well his 
very attitude and expression on this day, when, a few 
years later, certain things came to pass in Gaul, under 
his full authority ; and that attitude and expression defined 
already, even thus early in their so friendly intercourse, 
and though he was still full of gratitude for his interest, 
a permanent point of difference between the emperor 
and himself — between himself, with all the convictions 
of his life taking centre to-day in his merciful, angry 
heart, and Aurelius, as representing all the light, all the 
apprehensive power there might be in pagan intellect. 
There was something in a tolerance such as this, in the 
bare fact that he could sit patiently through a scene like 
this, which seemed to Marius to mark Aurelius as his 
inferior now and for ever on the question of righteous- 
ness ; to set them on opposite sides, in some great con- 
flict, of which that difference was but a single present- 
ment. Due, in whatever proportions, to the abstract 
principles he had formulated for himself, or in spite of 
them, there was the loyal conscience within him, decid- 
ing, judging himself and every one else, with a wonderful 
sort of authority : — You ought, methinks, to be some- 
thing quite different from what you are; here! and here! 
Surely Aurelius must be lacking in that decisive conscience 
at first sight, of the intimations of which Marius could 
entertain no doubt — which he looked for in others. 
He at least, the humble follower of the bodily eye, was 
aware of a crisis in Hfe, in this brief, obscure existence, 
a fierce opposition of real good and real evil around him, 
the issues of which he must by no means compromise or 
confuse ; of the antagonisms of which the " wise " Marcus 
Aurelius was unaware. 

That long chapter of the cruelty of the Roman public 
shows may, perhaps, leave with the children of the 
modern world a feeling of self-complacency. Yet it 



XIV MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 183 

might seem well to ask ourselves — it is always well to 
do so, when we read of the slave-trade, for instance, or 
of great rehgious persecutions on this side or on that, 
or of anything else which raises in us the question, 
" Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing ? " — 
not merely, what germs of feeling we may entertain which, 
under fitting circumstances, would induce us to the like ; 
but, even more practically, what thoughts, what sort of 
considerations, may be actually present to our minds 
such as might have furnished us, living in another age, 
and in the midst of those legal crimes, with plausible 
excuses for them : each age in turn, perhaps, having its 
own peculiar point of blindness, with its consequent 
peculiar sin — the touch-stone of an unfailing conscience 
in the select few. 

Those cruel amusements were, certainly, the sin of 
blindness, of deadness and stupidity, in the age of 
Marius ; and his light had not failed him regarding it. 
Yes ! what was needed was the heart that would make 
it impossible to witness all this ; and the future would 
be with the forces that could beget a heart like that. 
His chosen philosophy had said, — Trust the eye : Strive 
to be right always in regard to the concrete experience : 
Beware of falsifying your impressions. And its sanction 
had at least been effective here, in protesting — "This, 
and this, is what you may not look upon ! " — Surely evil was 
a real thing, and the wise man wanting in the sense of it, 
where, not to have been, by instinctive election, on the 
right side, v/as to have failed in life. 



PART THE THIRD 



CHAPTER XV 



STOICISM AT COURT 



The very finest flower of the same company — Aurelius 
with the gilded fasces borne before him, a crowd of 
exquisites, the empress Faustina herself, and all the 
elegant blue-stockings of the day, who maintained, people 
said, their private " sophists " to whisper philosophy into 
their ears winsomely as they performed the duties of the 
toilet — was assembled again a few months later, in a 
different place and for a very different purpose. The 
temple of Peace, a "modernising" foundation of 
Hadrian, enlarged by a library and lecture-rooms, had 
grown into an institution like something between a 
college and a literary club ; and here Cornelius Fronto 
was to pronounce a discourse on the Nature of Morals, 
There were some, indeed, who had desired the emperor 
Aurelius himself to declare his whole mind on this matter. 
Rhetoric was become almost a function of the state : 
philosophy was upon the throne ; and had from time to 
time, by request, delivered an official utterance with 
well-nigh divine authority. And it was as the delegate 
of this authority, under the full sanction of the philoso- 
phic emperor — emperor and pontiff, that the aged Fronto 
purposed to-day to expound some parts of the Stoic 
doctrine, with the view of recommending morals to that 
refined but perhaps prejudiced company, as being, in 



i88 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

effect, one mode of comeliness in things — as it were 
music, or a kind of artistic order, in life. And he did 
this earnestly, with an outlay of all his science of mind, 
and that eloquence of which he was known to be a 
master. For Stoicism was no longer a rude and unkempt 
thing. Received at court, it had largely decorated itself : 
it was grown persuasive and insinuating, and sought not 
only to convince men's intelligence but to allure their 
souls. Associated with the beautiful old age of the 
great rhetorician, and his winning voice, it was almost 
Epicurean. And the old man was at his best on the 
occasion ; the last on which he ever appeared in this 
way. To-day was his own birthday. Early in the 
morning the imperial letter of congratulation had reached 
him ; and all the pleasant animation it had caused was 
in his face, when assisted by his daughter Gratia he 
took his place on the ivory chair, as president of the 
Athenceum of Rome, wearing with a wonderful grace the 
philosophic pall,— in reality neither more nor less than 
the loose woollen cloak of the common soldier, but 
fastened on his right shoulder with a magnificent clasp, 
the emperor's birthday gift. 

It was an age, as abundant evidence shows, whose 
delight in rhetoric was but one result of a general sus- 
ceptibility — an age not merely taking pleasure in words, 
but experiencing a great moral power in them. Fronto's 
quaintly fashionable audience would have wept, and also 
assisted with their purses, had his present purpose been, 
as sometimes happened, the recommendation of an 
object of charity. As it was, arranging themselves 
at their ease among the images and flowers, these 
amateurs of exquisite language, with their tablets open 
for careful record of felicitous word or phrase, were 
ready to give themselves wholly to the intellectual treat 
prepared for them, applauding, blowing loud kisses 
through the air sometimes, at the speaker's triumphant 



jcv MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 189 

exit from one of his long, skilfully modulated sentences ; 
while the younger of them meant to imitate everything 
about him, down to the inflections of his voice and the 
very folds of his mantle. Certainly there was rhetoric 
enough : — a wealth of imagery ; illustrations from 
painting, music, mythology, the experiences of love ; a 
management, by which subtle, unexpected meaning was 
brought out of familiar terms, like flies from morsels of 
amber, to use Fronto's own figure. But with all its 
richness, the higher claim of his style was rightly under- 
stood to lie in gravity and self-command, and an especial 
care for the purities of a vocabulary which rejected every 
expression unsanctioned by the authority of approved 
ancient models. 

And it happened with Marius, as it will sometimes 
happen, that this general discourse to a general audience 
had the effect of an utterance adroitly designed for him. 
His conscience still vibrating painfully under the shock 
of that scene in the amphitheatre, and full of the ethical 
charm of Cornelius, he was questioning himself with 
much impatience as to the possibility of an adjustment 
between his own elaborately thought-out intellectual 
scheme and the " old morality." In that intellectual 
scheme indeed the old morality had so far been allowed 
no place, as seeming to demand from him the admission 
of certain first principles such as might misdirect or 
retard him in his efforts towards a complete, many-sided 
existence ; or distort the revelations of the experience of 
life ; or curtail his natural liberty of heart and mind. 
But now (his imagination being occupied for the moment 
with the noble and resolute air, the gallantry, so to call 
it, which composed the outward mien and presentment 
of his strange friend's inflexible ethics) he felt already 
some nascent suspicion of his philosophic programme, in 
regard, precisely, to the question of good taste. There 
was the taint of a graceless " antinomianism " perceptible 



rgo MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

in it, a dissidence, a revolt against accustomed modes, the 
actual impression of which on other men might rebound 
upon himself in some loss of that personal pride to 
which it was part of his theory of life to allow so much. 
And it was exactly a moral situation such as this that 
Fronto appeared to be contemplating. He seemed to 
have before his mind the case of one — Cyrenaic or Epi- 
curean, as the courtier tends to be, by habit and instinct, 
if not on principle — who yet experiences, actually, a 
strong tendency to moral assents, and a desire, with as 
little logical inconsistency as may be, to find a place for 
duty and righteousness in his house of thought. 

And the Stoic professor found the key to this problem 
in the purely aesthetic beauty of the old morality, as an 
element in things, fascinating to the imagination, to good 
taste in its most highly developed form, through associa- 
tion — a system or order, as a matter of fact, in possession, 
not only of the larger world, but of the rare minority of 
elite intelligences ; from which, therefore, least of all 
would the sort of Epicurean he had in view endure to 
become, so to speak, an outlaw. He supposed his hearer 
to be, with all sincerity, in search after some principle of 
conduct (and it was here that he seemed to Marius to 
be speaking straight to him) which might give unity of 
motive to an actual rectitude, a cleanness and probity of 
life, determined partly by natural affection, partly by en- 
lightened self-interest or the feeling of honour, due in part 
even to the mere fear of penalties ; no element of which, 
however, was distinctively moral in the agent himself as 
such, and providing him, therefore, no common ground 
with a really moral being like Cornelius, or even like 
the philosophic emperor. Performing the same offices ; 
actually satisfying, even as they, the external claims of 
others ; rendering to all their dues — one thus circum- 
stanced would be wanting, nevertheless, in the secret of 
inward adjustment to the moral agents around him. 



XV MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 191 

How tenderly — more tenderly than many stricter souls 
— he might yield himself to kindly instinct ! what fine- 
ness of charity in passing judgment on others ! what an 
exquisite conscience of other men's susceptibilities ! He 
knows for how much the manner, because the heart 
itself, counts, in doing a kindness. He goes beyond 
most people in his care for all weakly creatures ; judging, 
instinctively, that to be but sentient is to possess rights. 
He conceives a hundred duties, though he may not call 
them by that name, of the existence of which purely 
duteous souls may have no suspicion. He has a kind 
of pride in doing more than they, in a way of his own. 
Sometimes, he may think that those men of line and 
rule do not really understand their own business. How 
narrow, inflexible, unintelligent ! what poor guardians 
(he may reason) of the inward spirit of righteousness, 
are some supposed careful walkers according to its 
letter and form. And yet all the while he admits, as such, 
no moral world at all : no theoretic equivalent to so 
large a proportion of the facts of life. 

But, over and above such practical rectitude, thus 
determined by natural affection or self-love or fear, he 
may notice that there is a remnant of right conduct, 
what he does, still more what he abstains from doing, 
not so much through his own free election, as from a 
deference, an "assent," entire, habitual, unconscious, to 
custom — to the actual habit or fashion of others, from 
whom he could not endure to break away, any more 
than he would care to be out of agreement with them 
on questions of mere manner, or, say, even, of dress. 
Yes ! there were the evils, the vices, which he avoided 
as, essentially, a failure in good taste. An assent, such 
as this, to the preferences of others, might seem to be 
the weakest of motives, and the rectitude it could deter- 
mine the least considerable element in a moral life. Yel 
here, according to Cornelius Fronto, was in truth the 



192 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

revealing example, albeit operating upon comparative 
trifles, of the general principle required. There was one 
great idea associated with which that determination to 
conform to precedent was elevated into the clearest, the 
fullest, the weightiest principle of moral action ; a 
principle under which one might subsume men's most 
strenuous efforts after righteousness. And he proceeded 
to expound the idea of Humanity — of a universal com- 
monwealth of mind, which becomes explicit, and as if 
incarnate, in a select communion of just men made 
perfect. 

'0 KOCTfxos wa-avel ttoXls ecrrtv — the world is as it were 
a commonwealth, a city : and there are observances, 
customs, usages, actually current in it, things our friends 
and companions will expect of us, as the condition of 
our living there with them at all, as really their peers or 
fellow-citizens. Those observances were, indeed, the 
creation of a visible or invisible aristocracy in it, whose 
actual manners, whose preferences from of old, become 
now a weighty tradition as to the way in which things 
should or should not be done, are like a music, to which 
the intercourse of life proceeds — such a music as no one 
who had once caught its harmonies would willingly jar. 
In this way, the becomiiig^ as in Greek — ro Trpeirov: or 
Ta^]6rj, mores^ manners^ as both Greeks and Romans said, 
would indeed be a comprehensive term for duty. Right- 
eousness would be, in the words of "Caesar" himself, of 
the philosophic Aurelius, but a " following of the reason- 
lable will of the oldest, the most venerable, of cities, of 
polities — of the royal, the law-giving element, therein — 
forasmuch as we are citizens also in that supreme city on 
high, of which all other cities beside are but as single 
habitations." But as the old man spoke with animation 
of this supreme city, this invisible society, whose con- 
science was become explicit in its inner circle of inspired 
souls, of whose common spirit, the trusted leaders o/ 



MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 



19.1 



human conscience had been but the mouthpiece, of whose 
successive personal preferences in the conduct of Hfe, the 
" old morality " was the sum, — Marius felt that his own 
thoughts were passing beyond the actual intention of the 
speaker ; not in the direction of any clearer theoretic 
or abstract definition of that ideal commonwealth, but 
rather as if in search of its visible locality and abiding- 
place, the walls and towers of which, so to speak, he 
might really trace and tell, according to his own old, 
natural habit of mind. It would be the fabric, the out- 
ward fabric, of a system reaching, certainly, far beyond 
the great city around him, even if conceived in all the 
machinery of its visible and invisible influences at their 
grandest — as Augustus or Trajan might have conceived 
of them — however well the visible Rome might pass for 
a figure of that new, unseen, Rome on high. At 
moments, Marius even asked himself with surprise, 
whether it might be some vast secret society, the speaker 
had in view : — that august community, to be an outlaw 
from which, to be foreign to the manners of which, was 
a loss so much greater than to be excluded, into the 
ends of the earth, from the sovereign Roman common- 
wealth. Humanity, a universal order, the great polity, 
its aristocracy of elect spirits, the mastery of their 
example over their successors — these were the ideas, 
stimulating enough in their way, by ^association with 
which the Stoic professor had attempted to elevate, to 
unite under a single principle, men's moral efforts, him- 
self lifted up with so genuine an enthusiasm. But where 
might Marius search for all this, as more than an in- 
tellectual abstraction ? Where were those elect souls in 
whom the claim- of Humanity became so amiable, 
winning, persuasive — whose footsteps through the 
world were so beautiful in the actual order he saw — 
whose faces averted from him, would be more than he 
could bear ? Where was that comely order, to which as 
o 



194 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap, xv 

a great fact of experience he must give its due ; to which, 
as to all other beautiful "phenomena" in life, he must, 
for his own peace, adjust himself? 

Rome did well to be serious. The discourse ended 
somewhat abruptly, as the noise of a great crowd in 
motion was heard below the walls ; whereupon, the 
audience, following the humour of the younger element 
in it, poured into the colonnade, from the steps of which 
the famous procession, or transvecfio, of the military 
knights was to be seen passing over the Forum, from 
their trysting-place at the temple of Mars, to the temple 
of the Dioscuri. The ceremony took place this year, not 
on the day accustomed — anniversary of the victory of 
Lake Regillus, with its pair of celestial assistants — and 
amid the heat and roses of a Roman July, but, by 
anticipation, some months earlier, the almond-trees along 
the way being still in leafless flower. Through that light 
trellis-work, Marius watched the riders, arrayed in all 
their gleaming ornaments, and wearing wreaths of olive 
around their helmets, the faces below which, what with 
battle and the plague were almost all youthful. It was a 
flowery scene enough, but had to-day its fulness of war- 
like meaning; the return of the army to the North, 
where the enemy was again upon the move, being now 
imminent. Cornelius had ridden along in his place, and, 
on the dismissal of the company, passed below the steps 
where Marius stood, with that new song he had heard 
once before floating from his lips. 



i 



CHAPTER XVI 

SECOND THOUGHTS 

And Marius, for his part, was grave enough. The 
discourse of Cornelius Fronto, with its wide prospect 
over the human, the spiritual, horizon, had set him on a 
review — on a review of the isolating narrowness, in 
particular, of his own theoretic scheme. Long after the very 
latest roses were faded, when " the town " had departed 
to country villas, or the baths, or the war, he remained 
behind in Rome ; anxious to try the lastingness of his 
own Epicurean rose-garden ; setting to work over again, 
and deliberately passing from point to point of his old 
argument with himself, down to its practical conclusions. 
That age and our own have much in common — many 
difficulties and hopes. Let the reader pardon me if 
here and there I seem to be passing from Marius to his 
modern representatives — from Rome, to Paris or London. 
What really were its claims as a theory of practice, 
of the sympathies that determine practice? It had 
been a theory, avowedly, of loss and gain (so to call it) 
of an economy. If, therefore, it missed something in 
the commerce of life, which some other theory of 
practice was able to include, if it made a needless sacrifice, 
then it must be, in a manner, inconsistent with itself, 
and lack theoretic completeness. Did it make such a 
sacrifice ? What did it lose, or cause one to lose ? 



196 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap 

And we may note, as Marius could hardly have done, 
that Cyrenaicism is ever the characteristic philosophy of 
youth, ardent, but narrow in its survey — sincere, but apt 
to become one-sided, or even fanatical. It is one of 
those subjective and partial ideals, based on vivid, because 
limited, apprehension of the truth of one aspect of 
experience (in this case, of the beauty of the world and 
the brevity of man's life there) which it may be 
said to be the special vocation of the young to express. 
In the school of Cyrene, in that comparatively fresh 
Greek world, we see this philosophy where it is least 
blase, as we say ; in its most pleasant, its blithest and 
yet perhaps its wisest form, youthfully bright in the 
youth of European thought. But it grows young again 
for a while in almost every youthful soul. It is spoken 
of sometimes as the appropriate utterance of jaded men ; 
but in them it can hardly be sincere, or, by the nature 
of the case, an enthusiasm. \ " Walk in the ways of 
thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes," is, indeed, 
most often, according to the supposition of the book 
from which I quote it, the counsel of the young, who 
feel that the sunshine is pleasant along their veins, and 
wintry weather, though in a general sense foreseen, a long 
way off. The youthful enthusiasm or fanaticism, the self- 
abandonment to one favourite mode of thought or taste, 
which occurs, quite naturally, at the outset of every really 
vigorous intellectual career, finds its special opportunity in 
a theory such as that so carefully put together by Marius, 
just because it seems to call on one to make the sacrifice, 
accompanied by a vivid sensation of power and will, of 
what others value — sacrifice of some conviction, or doctrine, 
or supposed first principle — for the sake of that clear-eyed 
intellectual consistency, which is like spotless bodily 
cleanliness, or scrupulous personal honour, and has itself 
for the mind of the youthful student, when he first 
comes to appreciate it, the fascination of an ideal. 



XVI MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 197 

The Cyrenaic doctrine, then, reahsed as a motive of 
strenuousness or enthusiasm, is not so properly the 
utterance of the "jaded Epicurean," as of the strong 
young man in all the freshness of thought and feeling, 
fascinated by the notion of raising his life to the level of 
a daring theory, while, in the first genial heat of existence, 
the beauty of the physical world strikes potently upon 
his wide-open, unwearied senses. He discovers a great 
new poem every spring, with a hundred delightful things 
he too has felt, but which have never been expressed, or 
at least never so truly, before. The workshops of the 
artists, who can select and set before us what is really 
most distinguished in visible Hfe, are open to him. He 
thinks that the old Platonic, or the new Baconian 
philosophy, has been better explained than by the 
authors themselves, or with some striking original 
development, this very month. In the quiet heat of 
early summer, on the dusty gold morning, the music 
comes, louder at intervals, above the hum of voices from 
some neighbouring church, among the flowering trees, 
valued now, perhaps, only for the poetically rapt faces 
among priests or worshippers, or the mere skill and 
eloquence, it may be, of its preachers of faith and 
righteousness. In his scrupulous idealism, indeed, he 
too feels himself to be something of a priest, and that 
devotion of his days to the contemplation of what is 
beautiful, a sort of perpetual religious service. Afar off, 
how many fair cities and delicate sea-coasts await him ! 
At that age, with minds of a certain constitution, no 
very choice or exceptional circumstances are needed to 
provoke an enthusiasm something like this. Life in 
modern London even, in the heavy glow of summer, is 
stuff sufficient for the fresh imagination of a youth to 
build its "palace of art" of; and the very sense and 
enjoyment of an experience in which all is new, are but 
enhanced, like that glow of summer itself, by the thought 



198 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

of its brevity, giving him something of a gambler's zest, 
in the apprehension, by dexterous act or dihgently ap- 
preciative thought, of the highly coloured moments which 
are to pass away so quickly. At bottom, perhaps, in his 
elaborately developed self-consciousness, his sensibilities, 
his almost fierce grasp upon the things he values at all, he 
has, beyond all others, an inward need of something 
permanent in its character, to hold by : of which circum- 
stance, also, he may be partly aware, and that, as with 
the brilliant Claudio in Measure for Measure^ it is, in 
truth, but darkness he is " encountering, like a bride." 
But the inevitable falling of the curtain is probably 
distant ; and in the daylight, at least, it is not often that 
he really shudders at the thought of the grave — the 
weight above, the narrow world and its company, within. 
When the thought of it does occur to him, he may say 
to himself : — Well ! and the rude monk, for instance, 
who has renounced all this, on the security of some dim 
world beyond it, really acquiesces in that " fifth act," 
amid all the consoling ministries around him, as little as 
I should at this moment ; though I may hope, that, as 
at the real ending of a play, however w^ell acted, I jnay 
already have had quite enough of it, and find a true well- 
being in eternal sleep. 

And precisely in this circumstance, that, consistently 
with the function of youth in general, Cyrenaicism will 
always be more or less the special philosophy, or 
" prophecy," of the young, when the ideal of a rich 
experience comes to them in the ripeness of the recep- 
tive, if not of the reflective, powers — precisely in this 
circumstance, if we rightly consider it, lies the duly 
prescribed corrective of that philosophy. For it is by 
its exclusiveness, and by negation rather than positively, 
that such theories fail to satisfy us permanently; and 
what they really need for their correction, is the com- 
plementary influence of some greater system, in which 



XVI MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 199 

they may find their due place. That Sturm und Drang 
of the spirit, as it has been called, that ardent and special 
apprehension of half-truths, in the enthusiastic, and as 
it were " prophetic " advocacy of which, devotion to 
truth, in the case of the young — apprehending but one 
point at a time in the great circumference — most usually 
embodies itself, is levelled down, safely enough, after- 
wards, as in history so in the individual, by the weakness 
and mere weariness, as well as by the maturer wisdom, 
of our nature. And though truth indeed, resides, as 
has been said, "in the whole" — in harmonisings and 
adjustments like this — yet those special apprehensions 
may still owe their full value, in this sense of "the 
whole," to that earlier, one-sided but ardent pre-occupa- 
tion with them. 

Cynicism and Cyrenaicism : — they are the earlier 
Greek forms of Roman Stoicism and Epicureanism, and 
in that world of old Greek thought, we may notice with 
some surprise that, in a Httle while, the nobler form of 
Cyrenaicism — Cyrenaicism cured of its faults — met the 
nobler form of Cynicism half-way. Starting from 
opposed points, they merged, each in its most refined 
form, in a single ideal of temperance or moderation. 
Something of the same kind may be noticed regarding 
some later phases of Cyrenaic theory. If it starts with 
considerations opposed to the religious temper, which 
the religious temper holds it a duty to repress, it is like 
it, nevertheless, and very unhke any lower development 
of temper, in its stress and earnestness, its serious 
appUcation to the pursuit of a very unworldly type of 
perfection. The saint, and the Cyrenaic lover of beauty, 
it may be thought, would at least understand each other 
better than either would understand the mere man of 
the world. Carry their respective positions a point 
further, shift the terms a httle, and they might actually 
touch. 



200 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

Perhaps all theories of practice tend, as they rise to 
their best, as understood by their worthiest represent- 
atives, to identification with each other. For the variety 
of men's possible reflections on their experience, as of 
that experience itself, is not really so great as it seems ; 
and as the highest and most disinterested ^\}[\\q.2\ forniulce^ 
filtering down into men's everyday existence, reach the 
same poor level of vulgar egotism, so, we may fairly 
suppose that all the highest spirits, from whatever con- 
trasted points they have started, would yet be found to 
entertain, in the moral consciousness reahsed by them- 
selves, much the same kind of mental company; to hold, 
far more than might be thought probable, at first sight, 
the same personal types of character, and even the same 
artistic and literary types, in esteem or aversion ; to con- 
vey, all of them alike, the same savour of unworldliness. 
And Cyrenaicism or Epicureanism too, new or old, may 
be noticed, in proportion to the completeness of its 
development, to approach, as to the nobler form of 
Cynicism, so also to the more nobly developed phases 
of the old, or traditional morality. In the gravity of its 
conception of life, in its pursuit after nothing less than 
a perfection, in its apprehension of the value of time — 
the passion and the seriousness which are like a consecra- 
tion — la passion et le serieux qui consacrent — it may be 
conceived, as regards its main drift, to be not so much 
opposed to the old morality, as an exaggeration of one 
special motive in it. 

Some cramping, narrowing, costly preference of one 
part of his own nature, and of the nature of things, to 
another, Marius seemed to have detected in himself, 
meantime, — in himself, as also in those old masters 
of the Cyrenaic philosophy. If they did realise the 
fjiovoxpovos rjSov-^, as it was called — the pleasure of the 
" Ideal Now " — if certain moments of their lives were 
high-pitched, passionately coloured, intent with sensation, 



XVI MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 201 

and a kind of knowledge which, in its vivid clearness, 
was like sensation — if, now and then, they apprehended 
the world in its fulness, and had a vision, almost 
"beatific," of ideal personalities in life and art, yet 
these moments were a very costly matter : they paid a 
great price for them, in the sacrifice of a thousand 
possible sympathies, of things only to be enjoyed 
through sympathy, from which they detached them- 
selves, in intellectual pride, in loyalty to a mere theory 
that would take nothing for granted, and assent to no 
approximate or hypothetical truths. In their unfriendly, 
repellent attitude towards the Greek religion, and the 
old Greek morality, surely, they had been but faulty 
economists. The Greek religion was then alive : then, 
still more than in its later day of dissolution, the higher 
view of it was possible, even for the philosopher. Its 
story made little or no demand for a reasoned or formal 
acceptance. A religion, which had grown through and 
through man's life, with so much natural strength ; had 
meant so much for so many generations ; which ex- 
pressed so much of their hopes, in forms so familiar and 
so winning ; linked by associations so manifold to man as 
he had been and was — a religion hke this, one would think, 
might have had its uses, even for a philosophic sceptic. 
Yet those beautiful gods, with the whole round of their 
poetic worship, the school of Gyrene definitely renounced. 
The old Greek morality, again, with all its imperfec- 
tions, was certainly a comely thing. — Yes ! a harmony, a 
music, in men's ways, one might well hesitate to jar. 
The merely aesthetic sense might have had a legitimate 
satisfaction in the spectacle of that fair order of choice 
manners, in those attractive conventions, enveloping, so 
gracefully, the whole of life, insuring some sweetness, 
some security at least against offence, in the intercourse 
of the world. Beyond an obvious utility, it could claim, 
indeed but custom — use-and-wont, as we say — for its 



202 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

sanction. But then, one of the advantages of thai 
liberty of spirit among the Cyrenaics (in which, through 
theory, they had become dead to theory, so that all 
theory, as such, was really indifferent to them, and 
indeed nothing valuable but in its tangible ministration 
to life) was precisely this, that it gave them free play in 
using as their ministers or servants, things which, to the 
uninitiated, must be masters or nothing. Yet, how little 
the followers of Aristippus made of that whole comely 
system of manners or morals, then actually in possession 
of life, is shown by the bold practical consequence, 
which one of them maintained (with a hard, self-opinion- 
ated adherence to his peculiar theory of values) in the not 
very amiable paradox that friendship and patriotism were 
things one could do without ; while another — Deaths- 
advocate^ as he was called — helped so many to self-destruc- 
tion, by his pessimistic eloquence on the evils of life, that 
his lecture-room was closed. That this was in the range of 
their consequences — that this was a possible, if remote, 
deduction from the premisses of the discreet Aristippus — 
was surely an inconsistency in a thinker who professed 
above all things an economy of the moments of life. And 
yet those old Cyrenaics felt their way, as if in the dark, 
we may be sure, like other men in the ordinary transactions 
of life, beyond the narrow limits they drew of clear and 
absolutely legitimate knowledge, admitting what was not 
of immediate sensation, and drawing upon that "fantas- 
tic " future which might never come. A- little more of 
such " walking by faith," a little more of such not un- 
reasonable "assent," and they might have profited by a 
hundred services to their culture, from Greek religion 
and Greek morality, as they actually were. The spectacle 
of their fierce, exclusive, tenacious hold on their own 
narrow apprehension, makes one think of a picture with 
no relief, no soft shadows nor breadth of space, or of a 
drama without proportionate repose. 



XVI MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 203 

Yet it was of perfection that Marius (to return to him 
again from his masters, his intellectual heirs) had been 
really thinking all the time : a narrow perfection it 
might be objected, the perfection of but one part 
of his nature — his capacities of feeling, of exquisite 
physical impressions, of an imaginative sympathy — but 
still, a true perfection of those capacities, wrought out to 
their utmost degree, admirable enough in its way. He too 
is an economist : he hopes, by that " insight " of which 
the old Cyrenaics made so much, by skilful apprehension 
of the conditions of spiritual success as they really are, 
the special circumstances of the occasion with which he 
has to deal, the special felicities of his own nature, to 
make the most, in no mean or vulgar sense, of the few 
years of hfe ; few, indeed, for the attainment of anything 
like general perfection ! With the brevity of that sum 
of years his mind is exceptionally impressed ; and this 
purpose makes him no frivolous dilettante^ but graver 
than other men : his scheme is not that of a trifler, but 
rather of one who gives a meaning of his own, yet a 
very real one, to those old words — Let us wo?'k while it 
is day I He has a strong apprehension, also, of the 
beauty of the visible things around him ; their fading, 
momentary, graces and attractions. His natural sus- 
ceptibility in this direction, enlarged by experience, 
seems to demand of him an almost exclusive pre-occupa- 
tion with the aspects of things ; with their aesthetic char- 
acter, as it is called — their revelations to the eye and 
the imagination : not so much because those aspects 
of them yield him the largest amount of enjoyment, as 
because to be occupied, in this way, with the aesthetic 
or imaginative side of things, is to be in real contact 
with those elements of his own nature, and of theirs, 
which, for him at least, are matter of the most real kind of 
apprehension. As other men are concentrated upon truths 
of number, for instance, or on business, or it may be on 



204 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

the pleasures of appetite, so he is wholly bent on living 
in that full stream of refined sensation. And in the 
prosecution of this love of beauty, he claims an entire 
personal liberty, liberty of heart and mind, liberty, above 
all, from what may seem conventional answers to first 
questions. 

But, without him there is a venerable system of 
sentiment and idea, widely extended in time and place, 
in a kind of impregnable possession of human life — a 
system, which, like some other great products of the 
conjoint efforts of human mind through many genera- 
tions, is rich in the world's experience ; so that, in 
attaching oneself to it, one lets in a great tide of that 
experience, and makes, as it were with a single step, a 
great experience of one's own, and with great conse- 
quent increase to one's sense of colour, variety, and 
relief, in the spectacle of men and things. The mere 
sense that one belongs to a system — an imperial system 
or organisation — has, in itself, the expanding power of a 
great experience ; as some have felt who have been 
admitted from narrower sects into the communion of the 
catholic church ; or as the old Roman citizen felt. It 
is, we might fancy, what the coming into possession of 
a very widely spoken language might be, with a great 
literature, which is also the speech of the people we have 
to live among. 

A wonderful order, actually in possession of human 
life ! — grown inextricably through and through it ; pene- 
trating into its laws, its very language, its mere habits of 
decorum, in a thousand half-conscious ways ; yet still 
felt to be, in part, an unfulfilled ideal ; and, as such, 
awakening hope, and an aim, identical with the one only 
consistent aspiration of mankind ! In the apprehension 
of that, just then, Marius seemed to have joined 
company once more with his own old self; to have 
overtaken on the road the pilgrim who had come tc 



XV! MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 205 

Rome, with absolute sincerity, on the search for per- 
fection. It defined not so much a change of practice, 
as of sympathy — a new departure, an expansion, of 
sympathy. It involved, certainly, some curtailment of 
his liberty, in concession to the actual manner, the 
distinctions, the enactments of that great crowd of 
admirable spirits, who have elected so, and not otherwise, 
in their conduct of life, and are not here to give one, so 
to term it, an "indulgence." But then, under the sup- 
position of their disapproval, no roses would ever seem 
worth plucking again. The authority they exercised 
was like that of classic taste — an influence so subtle, 
yet so real, as defining the loyalty of the scholar ; or 
of some beautiful and venerable ritual, in which every 
observance is become spontaneous and almost mechan- 
ical, yet is found, the more carefully one considers it, to 
have a reasonable significance and a natural history. 

And Marius saw that he would be but an inconsistent 
Cyrenaic, mistaken in his estimate of values, of loss and 
gain, and untrue to the well-considered economy of life 
which he had brought with him to Rome — that some 
drops of the great cup would fall to the ground — if he 
did not make that concession, if he did but remain just 
there. 



CHAPTER XVII 



BEATA URBS 



•* Many prophets and kings have desired to see the things 

which ye see.'' 

The enemy on the Danube was, indeed, but the van- 
guard of the mighty invading hosts of the fifth century. 
Illusively repressed just now, those confused movements 
along the northern boundary of the Empire were 
destined to unite triumphantly at last, in the barbarism, 
which, powerless to destroy the Christian church, was 
yet to suppress for a time the achieved culture of the 
pagan world. The kingdom of Christ was to grow up in 
a somewhat false aUenation from the light and beauty of 
the kingdom of nature, of the natural man, with a partly 
mistaken tradition concerning it, and an incapacity, as it 
might almost seem at times, for eventual reconciliation 
thereto. Meantime Italy had armed itself once more, 
in haste, and the imperial brothers set forth for the 
Alps. 

Whatever misgiving the Roman people may have felt 
as to the leadership of the younger was unexpectedly 
set at rest ; though with some temporary regret for the 
loss of what had been, after all, a popular figure on the 
world's stage. Travelling fraternally in the same litter 
with Aurelius, Lucius Verus was struck with sudden and 
mysterious disease, and died as he hastened back 
to Rome. His death awoke a swarm of sinister rumours. 



CHAP. XVII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 207 

to settle on Lucilla, jealous, it was said, of Fabia her 
sister, perhaps of Faustina — on Faustina herself, who had 
accompanied the imperial progress, and was anxious 
now to hide a crime of her own — even on the elder 
brother, who, beforehand with the treasonable designs of 
his colleague, should have helped him at supper to a 
favourite morsel, cut with a knife poisoned ingeniously 
on one side only. Aurelius, certainly, with sincere 
distress, his long irritations, so dutifully concealed or 
repressed, turning now into a single feeling of regret for 
the human creature, carried the remains back to Rome, 
and demanded of the Senate a public funeral, with a 
decree for the apotheosis^ or canonisation, of the dead. 

For three days the body lay in state in the Forum, 
enclosed in an open coffin of cedar-wood, on a bed of 
ivory and gold, in the centre of a sort of temporary 
chapel, representing the temple of his patroness Venus 
Genetrix. Armed soldiers kept watch around it, while 
choirs of select voices relieved one another in the chanting 
of hymns or monologues from the great tragedians. At 
the head of the couch were displayed the various 
personal decorations which had belonged to Verus in life. 
Like all the rest of Rome, Marius went to gaze on the 
face he had seen last scarcely disguised under the hood 
of a travelling-dress, as the wearer hurried, at nightfall, 
along one of the streets below the palace, to some amor- 
ous appointment. Unfamiliar as he still was with dead 
faces, he was taken by surprise, and touched far beyond 
what he had reckoned on, by the piteous change there ; 
even the skill of Galen having been not wholly success- 
ful in the process of embalming. It was as if a brother 
of his own were lying low before him, with that meek 
and helpless expression, it would have been a sacrilege 
to treat rudely. 

Meantime, in the centre of the Campus Martius^ 
within the grove of poplars which enclosed the space where 



2o8 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

the body of Augustus had been burnt, the great funeral 
pyre, stuffed with shavings of various aromatic woods, 
was built up in many stages, separated from each other 
by a light entablature of woodwork, and adorned abund- 
antly with carved and tapestrie'd images. Upon this 
pyramidal or flame-shaped structure lay the corpse, hidden 
now under a mountain of flowers and incense brought by 
the women, who from the first had had their fondness 
for the wanton graces of the deceased. The dead body 
was surmounted by a waxen effigy of great size, arrayed 
in the triumphal ornaments. At last the Centurions to 
whom that office belonged, drew near, torch in hand, to 
ignite the pile at its four corners, while the soldiers, in 
wild excitement, flung themselves around it, casting into 
the flames the decorations they had received for acts of 
valour under the dead emperor's command. 

It had been a really heroic order, spoiled a little, at 
the last moment, through the somewhat tawdry artifice, 
by which an eagle — not a very noble or youthful 
specimen of its kind — was caused to take fligiit amid the 
real or affected awe of the spectators, above the perishing 
remains ; a court chamberlain, according to ancient 
etiquette, subsequently making official declaration before 
the Senate, that the imperial " genius " had been seen in 
this way, escaping from the fire. And Marius was 
present when the Fathers, duly certified of the fact, by 
" acclamation," muttering their judgment all together, in 
a kind of low, rhythmical chant, decreed Cceliwi — the 
privilege of divine rank to the departed. 

The actual gathering of the ashes in a white cere- 
cloth by the widowed Lucilla, when the last flicker had 
been extinguished by drops of wine ; and the conveyance 
of them to the little cell, already populous, in the central 
mass of the sepulchre of Hadrian, still in all the splendour 
of its statued colonnades, were a matter of private or 
domestic duty ; after the due accomplishment of which 



KVii MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 209 

Aurelius was at liberty to retire for a time into the 
privacy of his beloved apartments of the Palatine. And 
hither, not long afterwards, Marius was summoned a 
second time, to receive from the imperial hands the 
great pile of manuscripts it would be his business to 
revise and arrange. 

One year had passed since his first visit to the palace; 
and as he climbed the stairs to-day, the great cypresses 
rocked against the sunless sky, like living creatures in «! 
pain. He had to traverse a long subterranean gallery, 
once a secret entrance to the imperial apartments, and 
in our own day, amid the ruin of all around it, as smooth 
and fresh as if the carpets were but just removed from 
its floor after the return of the emperor from the shov/s. 
It was here, on such an occasion, that the emperor 
Caligula, at the age of twenty -nine, had come by his 
end, the assassins gliding along it as he lingered a few 
moments longer to watch the movements of a party of 
noble youths at their exercise in the courtyard below. 
As Marius waited, a second time, in that little red room 
in the house of the chief chamberlain, curious to-4f>ok 
once more upon its painted walls — the very place* 
whither the assassins were said to have turned for refuge 
after the murder — he could all but see the figure, 
which in its surrounding light and darkness seemed to 
him the most melancholy in the entire history of Rome. 
He called to mind the greatness of that popularity and 
early promise — the stupefying height of irresponsible 
power, from which, after all, only men's viler side had been 
clearly visible — the overthrow of reason — the seemingly 
irredeemable memory ; and still, above all, the beautiful 
head in which the noble fines of the race of Augustus 
were united to, he knew not what expression of sensibiHty 
and fineness, not theirs, and for the fike of which one 
must pass onward to the Antonines. Popular hatred 
had been careful to destroy its semblance wherever it 



2IO MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap 

was to be found ; but one bust, in dark bronze-like 
basalt of a wonderful perfection of finish, preserved in the 
museum of the Capitol, may have seemed to some visitors 
there perhaps the finest extant relic of Roman art. Had 
the very seal of empire upon those sombre brows, re- 
flected from his mirror, suggested his insane attempt upon 
the liberties, the dignity of men ? — " O humanity ! " he 
seems to ask, " what hast thou done to me that I should 
so despise thee?"^ — And might not this be indeed the 
true meaning of kingship, if the world would have one 
man to reign over it ? The like of this : or, some in- 
credible, surely never to be realised, height of disinterest- 
edness, in a king who should be the servant of all, quite 
at the other extreme of the practical dilemma involved 
in such a position. Not till some while after his death 
had the body been decently interred by the piety of the 
sisters he had driven into exile. Fraternity of feeling 
had been no invariable feature in the incidents of Roman 
story. One long Vicus Sceleratus^ from its first dim 
foundation in fraternal quarrel on the morrow of a 
common deliverance so touching — had not almost every 
step in it some gloomy memory of unnatural violence ? 
Romans did well to fancy the traitress Tarpeia still 
"green in earth," crowned, enthroned, at the roots of 
the Capitoline rock. If in truth the religion of Rome 
was everywhere in it, like that perfume of the funeral 
incense still upon the air, so also was the memory of 
crime prompted by a hypocritical cruelty, down to the 
erring, or not erring, Vesta calmly buried alive there, only 
eighty years ago, under Domitian. 

It was with a sense of reHef that Marius found him- 
self in the presence of Aurelius, whose gesture of friendly 
intelligence, as he entered, raised a smile at the gloomy 
train of his own thoughts just then, although since his 
first visit to the palace a great change had passed over 
it. The clear daylight found its way now into empty 



XVII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 211 

rooms. To raise funds for the war, Aurelius, his 
luxurious brother being no more, had determined to sell 
by auction the accumulated treasures of the imperial 
household. The works of art, the dainty furniture, had 
been removed, and were now " on view " in the Forum, 
to be the delight or dismay, for many weeks to come, of 
the large public of those who were curious in these things. 
In such wise had Aurelius come to the condition of 
philosophic detachment he had affected as a boy, hardly 
persuaded to wear warm clothing, or to sleep in more 
luxurious manner than on the bare floor. But, in his 
empty house, the man of mind, who had always made so 
much of the pleasures of philosophic contemplation, felt 
freer in thought than ever. He had been reading, with 
less self-reproach than usual, in the Republic of Plato, 
those passages which describe the life of the philosopher- 
kings — like that of hired servants in their own house — 
who, possessed of the "gold undefiled" of intellectual 
vision, forgo so cheerfully all other riches. (It was one 
of his happy days : one of those rare days, Wnen, almost 
with none of the effort, otherwise so constant with him, 
his thoughts came rich and full, and converged in a 
mental view, as exhilarating to him as the prospect of 
some wide expanse of landscape to another man's bodily 
eye. /fie seemed to lie readier than was his wont to the 
imaginative influence of the philosophic reason — to its 
suggestions of a possible open country, commencing just 
where all actual experience leaves off, but which experi- 
ence, one's own and not another's, may one day occupy. 
In fact, he was seeking strength for himself, in his own way, 
before he started for that ambiguous earthly warfare which 
was to occupy the remainder of his life. " Ever remember 
this," he writes, " that a happy life depends, not on many 
things — kv oAtytb-Tois Ketrai." And to-day, committing 
himself with a steady effort of volition to the mere silence 
of the great empty apartments, he might be said to have 



v 



212 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN cha?. 

escaped, according to Plato's promise to those who live 
closely with philosophy, from the evils of the world. 

In his "conversations with himself" Marcus Aurelius 
speaks often of that City on high, of which all other 
cities are but single habitations. From him in fact 
Cornelius Fronto, in his late discourse, had borrowed the 
expression ; and he certainly meant by it more than the 
whole commonwealth of Rome, in any ide?-lisation of it, 
however sublime. Incorporate somehow with the actual 
city whose goodly stones were lying beneath his gaze, it 
was also impHcate in that reasonable constitution of 
nature, by devout contemplation of which it is possible 
for man to associate himself to the consciousness of God. 
In that New Ro??ie he had taken up his rest for awhile 
on this day, deliberately feeding his thoughts on the 
better air of it, as another might have gone for mental 
renewal to a favourite villa. 

" Men seek retirement in country-houses," he writes, 
" on the sea-coast, on the mountains ; and you have your- 
self as much fondness for such places as another. But 
there is little proof of culture therein ; since the 
privilege is yours of retiring into yourself whensoever you 
please, — into that little farm of one's ovrn mind, where 
a silence so profound may be enjoyed." That it could 
make these retreats, was a plain consequence of the 
kingly prerogative of the mind, its dominion over circum- 
stance, its inherent liberty. — " It is in thy power to 
think as thou wilt : The essence of things is in thy 
thoughts about them : All is opinion, conception : No 
man can be hindered by another : What is outside thy 
circle of thought is nothing at all to it ; hold to this, and 
you are safe : One thing is needful — to live close to the 
divine genius within thee, and minister thereto worthily." 
And the first point in this true ministry, this culture, 
was to maintain one's soul in a condition of indifference 
and calm. How continually had public claims, the 



XVII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 213 

claims of other persons, with their rough angularities of 
character, broken in upon him, the shepherd of the flock. 
But after all he had at least this privilege he could not 
part with, of thinking as he would ; and it was well, now 
and then, by a conscious effort of will, to indulge it for 
a while, under systematic direction. The duty of thus 
making discreet, systematic use of the power of imagina- 
tive vision for purposes of spiritual culture, " since the 
soul takes colour from its fantasies," is a point he has 
frequently insisted on. 

The influence of these seasonable meditations — a 
symbol, or sacrament, because an intensified condition, 
of the soul's own ordinary and natural life — would remain 
upon it, perhaps for many days. There were experiences 
he could not forget, intuitions beyond price, he had come 
by in this way, which were almost like the breaking of 
a physical light upon his mind y as the great Augustus 
was said to have seen a mysterious physical splendour, 
yonder, upon the summit of the Capitol, where the altar 
of the Sibyl now stood. '' With a prayer, therefore, for 
inward quiet, for conformity to the divine reason, he 
read some select passages of Plato, which bear upon the 
harmony of the reason, in all its forms, with itself. — 
"Could there be Cosinos^ that wonderful, reasonable 
order, in him, and nothing but disorder in the world 
without ? " It was from this question he had passed 
on to the vision of a reasonable, a divine, order, not in 
nature, but in the condition of human affairs — that 
unseen Celestial City, Uranopolis, Callipolis, Urbs Beata 
— in which, a consciousness of the divine will being every- 
where realised, there would be, among other fehcitous 
differences from this lower visible world, no more quite 
hopeless death, of men, or children, or of their affections. 
He had tried to-day, as never before, to make the most 
of this vision of a New Rome, to realise it as distinctly 
as he could, and, as it were, find his way along its 



214 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap, xvii 

streets, ere he went down into a world so irksomely 
different, to make his practical effort towards it, with a 
soul full of compassion for men as they were. However 
distinct the mental image might have been to him, with 
the descent of but one flight of steps into the market- 
place below, it must have retreated again, as if at touch 
of some malign magic wand, beyond the utmost verge of 
the horizon. But it had been actually, in his clearest 
vision of it, a confused place, with but a recognisable 
entry, a tower or fountain, here or there, and haunted 
by strange faces, whose novel expression he, the great 
physiognomist, could by no means read. Plato, indeed, 
had been able to articulate, to see, at least in thought^, 
his ideal city. But just because Aurelius had passed 
beyond Plato, in the scope of the gracious charities he 
pre-supposed there, he had been unable really to track 
his way about it. Ah ! after all, according to Plato 
himself, all vision was but reminiscence, and this, his 
heart's desire, no place his soul could ever have visited 
in any region of the old world's achievements. He had 
but divined, by a kind of generosity of spirit, the void 
place, which another experience than his must fill. 

Yet Marius noted the wonderful expression of peace, 
of quiet pleasure, on the countenance of Aurelius, as he 
received from him the rolls of fine clear manuscript, 
fancying the thoughts of the emperor occupied at the 
moment with the famous prospect towards the Alban 
hiUs, from those lofty windows. 



CHAPTER xvirr 

"the ceremony of the dart" 

The ideas of Stoicism, so precious to Marcus Aurelius, 
ideas of large generalisation, have sometimes induced, in 
those over whose intellects they have had real power, a 
coldness of heart. It w^as the distinction of Aurelius 
that he was able to harmonise them with the kindness, 
one might almost say the amenities, of a humourist, as 
also with the popular religion and its many gods. 
Those vasty conceptions of the later Greek philosophy 
had in them, in truth, the germ of a sort of austerely 
opinionative " natural theology," and how often has that 
led to religious dryness — a hard contempt of everything 
in religion, which touches the senses, or charms the 
fancy, or really concerns the affections. Aurelius had 
made his own the secret of passing, naturally, and with 
no violence to his thought, to and fro, between the 
richly coloured and romantic religion of those old gods 
who had still been human beings, and a veiy abstract 
speculation upon the impassive, universal soul — that 
circle whose centre is everywhere, the circumference 
nowhere — of which a series of purely logicr.1 necessities 
had evolved the formula. As in many another instance, 
those traditional pieties of the place and the hour had 
been derived by him from his mother : — irapa rrjs fjiyrph^s 
TO Oeoa-ejSi^. Purified, as all such religion of concrete 



2i6 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

time and place needs to be, by frequent confronting 
with the ideal of godhead as revealed to that innate 
religious sense in the possession of which Aurelius 
differed from the people around him, it was the ground 
of many a sociability with their simpler souls, and for 
himself, certainly, a consolation, whenever the wings of 
his own soul flagged in the trying atmosphere of purely 
intellectual vision. A host of companions, guides, 
helpers, about him from of old time, " the very court 
and company of heaven," objects for him of personal 
reverence and affection — the supposed presence of the 
ancient popular gods determined the character of much 
of his daily life, and might prove the last stay of human 
nature at its weakest. " In every time and place," he 
had said, " it rests with thyself to use the event of the 
hour religiously : at all seasons worship the gods." And 
when he said "Worship the gods !" he did it, as strenu- 
ously as everything else. 

Yet here again, how often must he have experienced 
disillusion, or even some revolt of feeling, at that contact 
with coarser natures to which his religious conclusions 
exposed him. At the beginning of the year one hundred 
and seventy-three public anxiety was as great as ever ; and 
as before it brought people's superstition into unreserved 
play. For seven days the images of the old gods, and 
some of the graver new ones, lay solemnly exposed in 
the open air, arrayed in all their ornaments, each in his 
separate resting-place, amid lights and burning incense, 
while the crowed, following the imperial example, daily 
visited them, with offerings of flowers to this or that 
particular divinity, according to the devotion of each. 

But supplementing these older official observances, 
the very wildest gods. had their share of worship, — strange 
creatures with strange secrets startled abroad into open 
daylight. The delirious sort of religion of which Marius 
was a spectator in the streets of Rome, during the seven 



xviii MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 217 

days of the Lecttsfernhim, reminded him now and again 
of an observation of Apuleius : it was " as if the presence 
of the gods did not do men good, but disordered or 
weakened them." Some jaded women of fashion, 
especially, found in certain oriental devotions, at once 
relief for their religiously tearful souls and an opportunity 
for personal display ; preferring this or that " mystery." 
chiefly because the attire required in it was suitable to 
their peculiar manner of beauty. And one morning 
Marius encountered an extraordinary crimson object, 
borne in a litter through an excited crowd — the famous 
courtesan Benedicta, still fresh from the bath of blood, 
to which she had submitted herself, sitting below the 
scaffold where the victims provided for that purpose 
were slaughtered by the priests. Even on the last day 
of the solemnity, when the emperor hiraself performed 
one of the oldest ceremonies of the Roriian religion, this 
fantastic piety had asserted itself. There were victims 
enough certainly, brought from the choice pastures of the 
Sabine mountains, and conducted around the city they 
were to die for, in almost continuous procession, covered 
with flowers and well-nigh worried to death before the 
time by the crowds of people superstitiously pressing to 
touch them. But certain old-fashioned Romans, in these 
exceptional circumstances, demanded something more 
than this, in the way of a human sacrifice after the 
ancient pattern ; as when, not so long since, some Greeks 
or Gauls had been buried alive in the Forum. At least, 
human blood should be shed ; and it was through a wild 
multitude of fanatics, cutting their flesh with knives and 
whips and licking up ardently the crimson stream, that 
the emperor repaired to the temple of Bellona, and in 
solemn symbolic act cast the bloodstained spear, or 
"dart," carefully preserved there, towards tlie enemy's 
country — towards that unknown world of German homes, 
still warm, as some believed under the faint northern 



2i8 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

twilight, with those innocent affections of which Romans 
had lost the sense. And this at least was clear, amid 
all doubts of abstract right or wrong on either side, that 
the ruin of those homes was involved in what Aurelius 
was then preparing for, with, — Yes ! the gods be thanked 
for that achievement of an invigorating philosophy ! — 
almost with a light heart. 

For, in truth, that departure, really so difficult to him, 
for which Marcus AureHus had needed to brace himself 
so strenuously, came to test the power of a long-studied 
theory of practice ; and it was the development of this 
theory — a theoria^ literally — a view, an intuition, of the 
most important facts, and still more important possi- 
bilities, concerning man in the world, that Marius now 
discovered, almost as if by accident, below the dry sur- 
face of the manuscripts entrusted to him. The great 
purple rolls contained, first of all, statistics, a general 
historical account of the writer's own time, and an exact 
diary ; all alike, though in three different degrees of near- 
ness to the writer's own personal experience, laborious, 
formal, self-suppressing. This was for the instruction of 
the public ; and part of it has, perhaps, found its way 
into the Augustan Histories. But it was for the especial 
guidance of his son Commodus that he had permitted 
himself to break out, here and there, into reflections 
upon what was passing, into conversations with the 
reader. And then, as though he were put off his guard 
in this way, there had escaped into the heavy matter-of- 
fact, of which the main portion was composed, morsels 
of his conversation with himself. It was the romance of 
a soul (to be traced only in hints, wayside notes, quota- 
tions from older masters), as it were in lifelong, and often 
baffled search after some vanished or elusive golden 
fleece, or Hesperidean fruit-trees, or some mysterious 
light of doctrine, ever retreating before him. A man, 
he had seemed to Marius from the first, of two lives, as 



XVIII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 219 

we say. Of what nature, he had sometimes wondered, 
on the day, for instance, when he had interrupted the 
emperor's musings in the empty palace, might be that 
placid inward guest or inhabitant, who from amid the 
pre-occupations of the man of practical affairs looked 
out, as if surprised, at the things and faces around. 
Here, then, under the tame surface of what was meant 
for a life of business, Marius discovered, welcoming a 
brother, the spont. neous self-reve!ation of a soul^ as 
delicate as his own, — a soul for which conversation with 
itself was a necessity of existence. Marius, indeed, had 
always suspected that the sense of such necessity was a 
peculiarity of his. But here, certainly, was another, in 
this respect like himself; and again he seemed to detect 
the advent of some new or changed spirit into the world, 
mystic, inward, hardly to be satisfied with that wholly 
external and objective habit of life, which had been 
sufficient for the old classic soul. His purely literary 
curiosity was greatly stimulated by this example of a 
book of self-portraiture, 'it was in fact the position of 
the modern essayist, — creature of efforts rather than of 
achievements, in the matter of apprehending truth, but 
at least conscious of lights by the way, which he must 
needs record, acknowledge. ,- What seemed to underlie 
that position was the desire to make the most of every 
experience that might come, outwardly or from within : to 
perpetuate, to display, what was so fleeting, in a kind of 
instinctive, pathetic protest against the imperial writer's 
own theory — that theory of the " perpetual flux " of all 
things — to Marius himself, so plausible from of old. 

There was, besides, a special moral or doctrinal 
significance in the making of such conversation with 
one's self at all. The Logos^ the reasonable spark, in 
man, is common to him with the gods — kolvos avrui Trpos 
Tovs Oeovs — cum dm communis. That might seem but 
the truism of a certain school ot philosophy ; but in 



220 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chaf 

Aurelius was clearly an original and lively apprehension. 
There could be no inward conversation with one's self 
such as this, unless there were indeed some one else, aware 
of our actual thoughts and feelings, pleased or displeased 
at one's disposition of one's self. Cornelius Fronto too 
could enounce that theory of the reasonable community 
between men and God, in many different ways. But 
then, he was a cheerful man, and Aurelius a singularly 
sad one ; |and what to Fronto was but a doctrine, or a 
motive of mere rhetoric, was to the other a consolation. 
He walks and talks, for a spiritual refreshment lacking 
which he would faint by the way, with what to the learned 
professor is but matter of philosophic eloquence. 

In performing his public religious functions Marcus 
Aurelius had ever seemed like one who took part in some 
great process, a great thing really done, with more than 
the actually visible assistants about him. Here, in these 
manuscripts, in a hundred marginal flowers of thought or 
language, in happy new phrases of his own like the 
impromptus of an actual conversation, in quotations from 
other older masters of the inward life, taking new signi- 
ficance from the chances of such intercourse, was the 
record of his communion with that eternal reason, which 
was also his own proper self, with the divine companion, 
whose tabernacle was in the intelligence of men — the 
journal of his daily commerce with that. 

Chance : or Providence ! Chance : or Wisdom, one 
with nature and man, reaching from end to end, through 
all time and all existence, orderly disposing all things, 
according to fixed periods, as he describes it, in terms 
very like certain well-known words of the book of 
IVisdom: — those are the "fenced opposites" of the 
speculative dilemma, the tragic cmbarras^ of which 
Aurelius cannot too often remind himself as the sum- 
mary of man's situation in the world. If there be, how- 
ever, a provident soul like this " behind the veil," truly, 



xviii MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 221 

even to him, even in the most intimate of those con- 
versations, it has never yet spokon with any quite irre- 
sistible assertion of its presence. Yet one's choice in 
that speculative dilemma, as he has found it, is on the 
whole a matter of will. — " 'Tis in thy power," here too, 
again, "to think as thou wilt." For his part he has 
asserted his will, and has the courage of his opinion. 
" To the better of two things, if thou findest that, turn 
with thy whole heart : eat and drink ever of the best 
before thee." "Wisdom," says that other disciple of 
the Sapiential philosophy, "hath mingled Her wine, 
she hath also prepared Herself a table." Tov aptcrrov 
ttTToAave : " Partake ever of Her best ! " And what 
Marius, peeping now very closely upon the intimacies of 
that singular mind, found a thing actually pathetic and 
affecting, was the manner of the writer's bearing as in 
the presence of this supposed guest ; so elusive, so 
jealous of any palpable manifestation of himself, so tax- 
ing to one's faith, never allowing one to lean frankly 
upon him and feel wholly at rest. Only, he would do 
his part, at least, in maintaining the constant fitness, the 
sweetness and quiet, of the guest-chamber. Seeming to 
vary with the intellectual fortune of the hour, from the 
plainest account of experience, to a sheer fantasy, only 
" believed because it was impossible," that one hope was, 
at all events, sufificient to make men's common pleasures 
and their common ambition, above all their commonest 
vices, seem very petty indeed, too petty to know of. It 
bred in him a kind of magnificence of character, in the 
old Greek sense of the term ; a temper incompatible 
with any merely plausible advocacy of his convictions, or 
merely superficial thoughts about anything whatever, or 
talk about other people, or speculation as to what was 
passing in their so visibly little souls, or much talking of 
any kind, however clever or graceful. A soul thus dis- 
posed had " already entered into the better life " : — was 



222 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

indeed in some sort "a priest, a minister of the gods." 
Hence his constant " recollection " ; a close watching 
of his soul, of a kind almost unique in the ancient 
world. — Before all things exa?mne into thyself: strive to 
be at home with thyself I — Marius, a sympathetic witness 
of all this, might almost seem to have had a foresight of 
monasticism itself in the prophetic future. With this 
mystic companion he had gone a step onward out of the 
merely objective pagan existence. Here was already a 
master in that craft of self-direction, which was about to 
play so large a part in the forming of human mind, 
under the sanction of the Christian church. 

Yet it was in truth a somewhat melancholy service, a 
service on which one must needs move about, solemn, 
serious, depressed, with the hushed footsteps of those 
who move about the house where a dead body is lying. 
Such was the impression which occurred to Marius again 
and again as he read, with a growing sense of some pro- 
found dissidence from his author. By certain quite 
traceable links of association he was reminded, in spite 
of the moral beauty of the philosophic emperor's ideas, 
how he had sat, essentially unconcerned, at the public 
shows. For, actually, his contemplations had made 
him of a sad heart, inducing in him that melancholy — 
Tristitia — which even the monastic moralists have 
held to be of the nature of deadly sin, akin to the sin of 
Desidia or Inactivity. Resignation, a sombre resigna- 
tion, a sad heart, patient bearing of the burden of a sad 
heart : — - Yes ! this belonged doubtless to the situa- 
tion of an honest thinker upon the world. Only, in this 
case there seemed to be too much of a complacent acqui- 
escence in the world as it is. And there could be no true 
Theodicee in that ; no real accommodation of the world 
as it is, to the divine pattern of the Logos, the eternal 
reason, over against it. It amounted to a tolerance of 
evil. 



xviii MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 223 

The soul of good, though it moveth upon a way thou canst but 

little understand, yet prospereth on the journey : 
If thou sufTerest nothing contrary to nature, there can be nought of 

evil with thee therein : 
If thou hast done aught in harmony with that reason in which men 

are communicant with the gods, there also can be nothing of evil 

with thee — nothing to be afraid of : 
Whatever is, is right ; as from the hand of one dispensing to every 

man according to his desert : 
If reason fulfil its part in things, what more dost thou require ? 
Dost thou take it ill that thy stature is but of four cubits ? 
That which happeneth to each of us is for the profit of the 

whole : 
The profit of the whole, — that was sufficient ! 

— Links, in a train of thought really generous ! of which, 
nevertheless, the forced and yet facile optimism, refusing 
to see evil anywhere, might lack, after all, the secret of 
genuine cheerfulness. It left in truth a weight upon the 
spirits ; and with that weight unlifted, there could be no 
real justification of the ways of Heaven to man. " Let 
thine air be cheerful," he had said ; and, with an effort, 
did himself at times attain to that serenity of aspect, 
which surely ought to accompany, as their outward flower 
and favour, hopeful assumptions like those. Still, what 
in Aurelius was but a passing expression, was with Cor- 
nelius (Marius could but note the contrast) nature, and 
a veritable physiognomy. With Cornelius, in fact, it was 
nothing less than the joy which Dante apprehended in 
the blessed spirits of the perfect, the outward semblance _ 
of which, like a reflex of physical light upon human faces 
from "the land which is very far off," we may trace from 
Giotto onward to its consummation in the work of 
Raphael — the serenity, the durable cheerfulness, of those 
who have been indeed delivered from death, and of 
which the utmost degree of that famed " blitheness " of 
the Greeks had been but a transitory gleam, as in care- 
less and wholly superficial youth. And yet, in Cornelius, 
it was certainly united with the bold recognition of evil 



224 MARTUS THE EPICUREAN cnw 

as a fact in the world ; real as an aching in the head or 
heart, which one instinctively desires to have cured ; an 
enemy with whom no terms could be made, visible, 
hatefully visible, in a thousand forms — the apparent 
waste of men's gifts in an early, or even in a late grave ; 
the death, as such, of men, and even of animals ; the 
disease and pain of the body. 

And there was another point of dissidence between 
Aurelius and his reader. — The philosophic emperor 
was a despiser of the body. Since it is " the peculiar 
privilege of reason to move within herself, and to be 
proof against corporeal impressions, suffering neither 
sensation nor passion to break in upon her," it follows 
that the true interest of the spirit must ever be to treat 
the body — Well ! as a corpse attached thereto, rather 
than as a living companion — nay, actually to promote 
its dissolution. In counterpoise to the inhumanity of 
this, presenting itself to the young reader as nothing less 
than a sin against nature, the very person of Cornelius 
was nothing less than a sanction of that reverent delight 
Marius had always had in the visible body of man. 
Such delight indeed had been but a natural consequence 
of the sensuous or materialistic character of the philo- 
sophy of his choice. Now to Cornelius the body of 
man was unmistakeably, as a later seer terms it, the one 
true temple in the world ; or rather itself the proper 
object of worship, of a sacred service, in which the very 
finest gold might have its seemliness and due symbolic 
use : — Ah ! and of what awe-stricken pity also, in its 
dejection, in the perishing gray bones of a poor man's 



grave ! 

Some flaw of vision, thought Marius, must be involved 
in the philosopher's contempt for it — some diseased 
point of thought, or moral dulness, leading logically to 
what seemed to him the strangest of all the emperor's 
inhumanities, the temper of the suicide ; for which 



XViii MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 225 

there was just then, indeed, a sort of mania in the world. 
"'Tis part of the business of Hfe," he read, "to lose it 
handsomely." On due occasion, " one might give life 
the slip." The moral or mental powers might fail one ; 
and then it were a fair question, precisely, whether the 
time for taking leave was not come : — " Thou canst leave 
this prison when thou wilt. Go forth boldly ! " Just 
there, in the bare capacity to entertain such question at 
all, there was what Marius, with a soul which must 
always leap up in loyal gratitude for mere physical 
sunshine, touching him as it touched the flies in the air, 
could not away with. There, surely, was a sign of some 
crookedness in the natural power of apprehension. It 
was the attitude, the melancholy intellectual attitude, of 
one who might be greatly mistaken in things — who 
might make the greatest of mistakes. 

A heart that could forget itself in the misfortune, or 
even in the weakness of others : — of this Marius had 
certainly found the trace, as a confidant of the emperor's 
conversations with himself, in spite of those jarring 
inhumanities, of that pretension to a stoical indifference, 
and the many difficulties of his manner of writing. He 
found it again not long afterwards, in still stronger 
evidence, in this way. As he read one morning early, 
there slipped from the rolls of manuscript a sealed letter 
with the emperor's superscription, which might well be 
of importance, and he felt bound to deliver it at once in 
person ; Aurelius being then absent from Rome in one 
of his favourite retreats, at Prjeneste, taking a few days 
of quiet with his young children, before his departure 
for the war. A whole day passed as Marius crossed the 
Campagna on horseback, pleased by the random autumn 
lights bringing out in the distance the sheep at pasture, 
the shepherds in their picturesque dress, the golden elms, 
tower and villa ; and it was after dark that he mounted 
the steep street of the little hill-town to the imperial 

Q 



226 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap, xviij 

residence. He was struck by an odd mixture of stillness 
and excitement about the place. Lights burned at the 
windows. It seemed that numerous visitors were within, 
for the courtyard was crowded with litters and horses in 
waiting. For the moment, indeed, all larger cares, even 
the cares of war, of late so heavy a pressure, had been 
forgotten in what was passing with the little Annius 
Verus ; who for his part had forgotten his toys, lying 
all day across the knees of his mother, as a mere child's 
ear-ache grew rapidly to alarming sickness with great and 
manifest agony, only suspended a little, from time to 
time, when from very weariness he passed into a few 
moments of unconsciousness. The country surgeon 
called in, had removed the imposthume v^ith the knife. 
There had been a great effort to bear this operation, for 
the terrified child, hardly persuaded to submit himself, 
when his pain was at its worst, and even more for the 
parents. At length, amid a company of pupils pressing 
in with him, as the custom was, to watch the proceedings 
in the sick-room, the eminent Galen had arrived, only to 
pronounce the thing done visibly useless, the patient fall- 
ing now into longer intervals of delirium. And thus, 
thrust on one side by the crowd of departing visitors, 
Marius was forced into the privacy of a grief, the desolate 
face of which went deep into his memory, as he saw the 
emperor carry the child away — quite conscious at last, 
but with a touching expression upon it of weakness and 
defeat — pressed close to his bosom, as if he yearned 
just then for one thing only, to be united, to be absolutely 
one with it, in its obscure distre-^s. 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE WILL AS VISION 

Paratum cor meum deus ! paratum cor menm I 

The emperor demanded a senatorial decree for the 
erection of images in memory of the dead prince ; that 
a golden one should be carried, together with the other 
images, in the great procession of the Circus^ and the 
addition of the child's name to the Hymn of the Salian 
Priests : and so, stifling private grief, without further 
delay set forth for the war. 

True kingship, as Plato, the old master of Aurelius, 
had understood it, was essentially of the nature of a 
service. If so be, you can discover a mode of life more 
desirable than the being a king, for those who shall be 
kings ; then, the true Ideal of the State will become a 
possibility ; but not otherwise. And if the life of Beatific 
Vision be indeed possible, if philosophy really " concludes 
in an ecstasy," affording full fruition to the entire nature 
of man ; then, for certain elect souls at least, a mode of 
life will have been discovered more desirable than to be 
a king. By love or fear you might induce such persons 
to forgo their privilege ; to take upon them the distaste- 
ful task of governing other men, or even of leading them 
to victory in battle. But, by the very conditions of its 
tenure, their dominion would be wholly a ministry to 
others : they would have taken upon them "the form of 
a servant : " they would be reigning for the wellbeing of 



228 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

others rather than their own. The true king, the righteous 
king, would be Saint Lewis, exihng himself from the 
better land and its perfected company — so real a thing 
to him, definite and real as the pictured scenes of his 
psalter — to take part in or to arbitrate men's quarrels, 
about the transitory appearances of things. In a lower 
degree (lower, in proportion as the highest Platonic dream 
is lower than any Christian vision) the true king would 
be Marcus Aurelius, drawn from the meditation of books, 
to be the ruler of the Roman people in peace, and still 
more, in war. 

To Aurelius, certainly, the philosophic mood, the 
visions, however dim, which this mood brought with it, 
were sufficiently pleasant to him, together with the endear- 
ments of his home, to make public rule nothing less than 
a sacrifice of himself according to Plato's requirement, now 
consummated in his setting forth for the campaign on 
the Danube. That it was such a sacrifice was to Marius 
visible fact, as he saw him ceremoniously lifted into the 
saddle amid all the pageantry of an imperial departure, 
yet with the air less of a sanguine and self-reliant leader 
than of one in some way or other already defeated. 
Through the fortune of the subsequent years, passing and 
repassing so inexplicably from side to side, the rumour of 
which reached him amid his own quiet studies, Marius 
seemed always to see that central figure, with its habitually 
dejected hue grown now to an expression of positive 
suffering, all the stranger from its contrast with the 
magnificent armour worn by the emperor on this occasion, 
as it had been worn by his predecessor Hadrian. 

— Totus et argento contextus et auro : 

clothed in its gold and silver, dainty as that old divinely 
constructed armour of which Homer tells, but without 
Its miraculous lightsomeness — he looked out baffled, 
labouring, moribund ; a mere comfortless shadow taking 



XIX MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 229 

part in some shadowy reproduction of the labours of 
Hercules, through those northern, mist-laden confines of 
the civilised world. It was as if the familiar soul which 
had been so friendly disposed towards him were actually 
departed to Hades ; and when he read the Conversations 
afterwards, though his judgment of them underwent no 
material change, it was nevertheless with the allowance 
we make for the dead. The memory of that suffering 
image, while it certainly strengthened his adhesion to 
what he could accept at all in the philosophy of Aurelius, 
added a strange pathos to what must seem the writer's 
mistakes. What, after all, had been the meaning of that 
incident, observed as so fortunate an omen long since, 
when the prince, then a little child much younger than 
was usual, had stood in ceremony among the priests of 
Mars and flung his crown of flowers with the rest at the 
sacred image reclining on the Pulvinar'i The other 
crowns lodged them.^elves here or there ; when, Lo ! the 
crown thrown by Aurelius, the youngest of them all, 
alighted upon the very brows of the god, as if placed 
there by a careful hand ! He was still young, also, when 
on the day of his adoption by Antoninus Pius he saw 
himself in a dream, with as it were shoulders of ivory, 
like the images of the gods, and found them more 
capable than shoulders of flesh. Yet he was now well- 
nigh fifty years of age, setting out with two-thirds of life 
behind him, upon a labour Avhich would fill the remainder 
of it with anxious cares — a labour for which he had per- 
haps no capacity, and certainly no taste. 

That ancient suit of armour was almost the only 
object Aurelius now possessed from all those much 
cherished articles oivertu collected by the Caesars, making 
the imperial residence like a magnificent museum. Not 
men alone were needed for the war, so that it became 
necessary, to the great disgust alike of timid persons and 
of the lovers of sport, to arm the gladiators, but money 



230 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap 

also was lacking. Accordingly, at the sole motion of 
Aurelius himself, unwilling that the public burden should 
be further increased, especially on the part of the poor, 
the whole of the imperial ornaments and furniture, a 
sumptuous collection of gems formed by Hadrian, with 
many works of the most famous painters and sculptors, 
even the precious ornaments of the emperor's chapel or 
Larariwn^ and the wardrobe of the empress P'austina, 
who seems to have borne the loss without a murmur, 
were exposed for public auction. "These treasures," 
said Aurelius, "like all else that I possess, belong by 
right to the Senate and People." Was it not a char- 
acteristic of the true kings in Plato that they had in their 
houses nothing they could call their own ? Connoisseurs 
had a keen delight in the mere reading of the Fr^tor's 
list of the property for sale. For two months the learned 
in these matters wer^ daily occupied in the appraising of 
the embroidered hangings, the choice articles of personal 
use selected for preservation by each succeeding age, the 
great outlandish pearls from Hadrian's favourite cabinet, 
the marvellous plate lying safe behind the pretty iron 
wicker-work of the shops in the goldsmiths' quarter. 
Meantime ordinary persons might have an interest in the 
inspection of objects which had been as daily companions 
to people so far above and remote from them — things so 
fine also in workmanship and material as to seem, with 
their antique and delicate air, a worthy survival of the 
grand bygone eras, like select thoughts or utterances em- 
bodying the very spirit of the vanished past. The town 
became more pensive than ever over old fashions. 

The welcome amusement of this last act of pre- 
paration for the great war being now over, all Rome 
seemed to settle down into a singular quiet, likely to 
last long, as though bent only on watching from afar the 
languid, somewhat uneventful course of the contest 
itself. Marius took advantage of it as an opportunity 



XIX MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 231 

for still closer study than of old, only now and then 
going out to one of his favourite spots on the Sabine or 
Alban hills for a quiet even greater than that of Rome 
in the country air. On one of these occasions, as if by 
favour of an invisible power withdrawing some unknown 
cause of dejection from around him, he enjoyed a quite 
unusual sense of self-possession — the possession of his 
own best and happiest self. After some gloomy thoughts 
over-night, he awoke under the full tide of the rising sun, 
himself full, in his entire refreshment, of that almost 
religious appreciation of sleep, the graciousness of its 
influence on men's spirits, which had made the old 
Greeks conceive of it as a god. It was like one of those 
old joyful wakings of childhood, now becoming rarer and 
rarer with him, and looked back upon with much regret 
as a measure of advancing age. In fact, the last bequest 
of this serene sleep had been a dream, in which, as once 
before, he overheard those he loved best pronouncing 
his name very pleasantly, as they passed through the 
rich light and shadow of a summer morning, along the 
pavement of a city — Ah ! fairer far than Rome ! In a 
moment, as he arose, a certain oppression of late setting 
very heavily upon him was lifted away, as though by 
some physical motion in the air. 

That flawless serenity, better than the most pleasur- 
able excitement, yet so easily ruffled by chance collision 
even with the things and persons he had come to value 
as the greatest treasure in life, was to be wholly his to- 
day, he thought, as he rode towards Tibur, under the 
early sunshine ; the marble of its villas glistening all the 
way before him on the hillside. And why could he not 
hold such serenity of spirit ever at command ? he asked, 
expert as he was at last become in the art of setting the 
house of his thoughts in order. " 'Tis in thy power to 
think as thou wilt : " he repeated to himself : it was the 
most serviceable of all the lessons enforced on him by 



232 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

those imperial conversations. — " 'Tis in thy power to think 
as thou wilt." And were the cheerful, sociable, restor- 
ative beliefs, of which he had there read so much, that 
bold adhesion, for instance, to the hypothesis of an 
eternal friend to man, just hidden behind the veil of a 
mechanical and material order, but only just behind it, 
ready perhaps even now to break through : — were they, 
after all, really a matter of choice, dependent on some 
deliberate act of volition on his part ? Were they 
doctrines one might take for granted, generously take for 
granted, and led on by them, at first as but well-defined- 
objects of hope, come at last into the region of a corre- 
sponding certitude of the intellect ? " It is the truth I 
seek," he had read, "the truth, by which no one," gray 
and depressing though it might seem, " was ever really 
injured." And yet, on the other hand, the imperial 
wayfarer, he had been able to go along with so far on 
his intellectual pilgrimage, let fall many things concerning 
the practicability of a methodical and self-forced assent 
to certain principles or pre-suppositions " one could not 
do without." Were there, as the expression ^^ one could 
not do withouf^ seemed to hint, beliefs, without which 
life itself must be almost impossible, principles which 
had their sufficient ground of evidence in that very fact ? 
Experience certainly taught that, as regarding the sensible 
world he could attend or not, almost at will, to this or 
that colour, this or that train of sounds, in the whole 
tumultuous concourse of colour and sound, so it was also, 
for the well-trained intelligence, in regard to that hum of 
voices which besiege the inward no less than the outward 
ear. Might it be not otherwise with those various and 
competing hypotheses, the permissible hypotheses, which, 
in that open field for hypothesis — one's own actual 
ignorance of the origin and tendency of our being — 
present themselves so importunately, some of them with 
so emphatic a reiteration, through all the mental changes 



XIX MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 233 

of successive ages ? Might the will itself be an organ of 
knowledge, of vision ? 

On this day truly no mysterious light, no irresistibly 
leading hand from afar reached him ; only the peculiarly 
tranquil influence of its first hour increased steadily 
upon him, in a manner with which, as he conceived, 
the aspects of the place he was then visiting had some- 
thing to do. The air there, air supposed to possess 
the singular property of restoring the whiteness of ivory, 
was pure and thin. An even veil of lawn- like white 
cloud had now drawn over the sky; and under its 
broad, shadowless light every hue and tone of time 
came out upon the yellow old temples, the elegant 
pillared circle of the shrine of the patronal Sibyl, the 
houses seemingly of a piece with the ancient funda- 
mental rock. Some half- conscious motive of poetic 
grace 'would appear to have determined their grouping; 
in part resisting, partly going along with the natural 
wildness and harshness of the place, its floods and 
precipices. An air of immense age possessed, above 
all, the vegetation around — a world of evergreen trees — 
the olives especially, older than how many generations 
of men's lives ! fretted and twisted by the combining 
forces of life and death, into every conceivable caprice of 
form. In the windless weather all seemed to be Usten- 
ing to the roar of the immemorial waterfall, plunging 
down so unassociably among these human habitations, 
and with a motion so unchanging from age to age as 
to count, even in this time-worn place, as an image of 
unalterable rest. Yet the clear sky all but broke to let 
through the ray which was silently quickening everything 
in the late February afternoon, and the unseen violet 
refined itself through the air. It was as if the spirit of 
life in nature were but withholding any too precipitate 
revelation of itself, in its slow, wise, maturing work. 

Through some accident to the trappings of his horse 



234 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

at the inn where he rested, Marius had an unexpected 
delay. He sat down in an olive-garden, and, all around 
him and within still turning to reverie, the course of his 
own life hitherto seemed to withdraw itself into some 
other world, disparted from this spectacular point where 
he was now placed to survey it, like that distant road 
below, along which he had travelled this morning across 
the Campagna. Through a dreamy land he could see 
himself moving, as if in another life, and like another 
person, through all his fortunes and misfortunes, passing 
from point to point, weeping, delighted, escaping from 
various dangers. That prospect brought him, first of all, 
an impulse of lively gratitude : it was as if he must look 
round for some one else to share his joy with : for some 
1 one to whom he might tell the thing, for his own relief 
/ Companionship, indeed, familiarity with others, gifted 
/ in this way or that, or at least pleasant to him, had been, 
' through one or another long span of it, the chief delight 
of the journey. And was it only the resultant general 
sense of such familiarity, diffused through his memory, 
that in a while suggested the question whether there 
had not been — besides Flavian, besides Cornelius even, 
and amid the solitude which in spite of ardent friendship 
he had perhaps loved best of all things — some other com- 
panion, an unfailing companion, ever at his side through- 
out ; doubling his pleasure in the roses by the way, 
patient of his peevishness or depression, sympathetic 
above all with his grateful recognition, onward from his 
earliest days, of the fact that he was there at all ? Must 
not the whole world around have faded away for him 
altogether, had he been left for one moment really alone in 
it ? In his deepest apparent solitude there had been rich 
entertainment. It was as if there were not one only, but 
two wayfarers, side by side, visible there across the plain, 
as he indulged his fancy. A bird came and sang among 
the wattled hedge-roses : an animal feeding crept nearer : 



XIX MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 235 

the child who kept it was gazing quietly : and the scene 
and the hours still conspiring, he passed from that mere 
fantasy of a self not himself, beside him in his coming 
and going, to those divinations of a living and com- 
panionable spirit at work in all things, of" which he had 
become aware from time to time in his old philosophic 
readings — in Plato and others, last but not least, in 
Aurelius. Through one reflection upon another, he 
passed from such instinctive divinations, to the thoughts 
which give them logical consistency, formulating at last, 
as the necessary exponent of our own and the world's 
life, that reasonable Ideal to which the Old Testament 
gives the name of Creator, which for the philosophers of 
Greece is the Eternal Reason, and in the New Testament 
the Father of Men — even as one builds up from act and 
word and expression of the friend actually visible at one's 
side, an ideal of the spirit within him. 

In this peculiar and privileged hour, his bodily frame, 
as he could recognise, although just then, in the whole 
sum of its capacities, so entirely possessed by him — Nay ! 
actually his very self — was yet determined by a far- 
reaching system of material forces external to it, a 
thousand combining currents from earth and sky. Its 
seemingly active powers of apprehension were, in fact, 
but susceptibilities to influence. The perfection of its 
capacity might be said to depend on its passive surrender, 
as of a leaf on the wind, to the motions of the great 
stream of physical energy without it. And might not the 
intellectual frame also, still more intimately himself as in 
truth it was, after the analogy of the bodily life, be a 
moment only, an impulse or series of impulses, a single 
process, in an intellectual or spiritual system external to 
it, diffused through all time and place — that great stream 
of spiritual energy, of which his own imperfect thoughts, 
yesterday or to-day, would be but the remote, and there- 
fore imperfect pulsations? It was the hypothesis 



236 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

(boldest, though in reality the most conceivable of all 
hypotheses) which had dawned on the contemplations of 
the two opposed great masters of the old Greek thought, 
alike : — the " World of Ideas," existent only because, and 
in so far as, they are known, as Plato conceived ; the 
"creative, incorruptible, informing mind," supposed by 
Aristotle, so sober-minded, yet as regards this matter left 
something of a mystic after all. Might not this entire 
material world, the very scene around him, the im- 
memorial rocks, the firm marble, the olive-gardens, the 
falling water, be themselves but reflections in, or a creation 
of, that one indefectible mind, wherein he too became 
conscious, for an hour, a day, for so many years ? Upon 
what other hypothesis could he so well understand the 
persistency of all these things for his own intermittent 
consciousness of them, for the intermittent conscious- 
ness of so many generations, fleeting away one after 
another? It was easier to conceive of the material 
fabric of things as but an element in a world of thought 
— as a thought in a mind, than of mind as an element, 
or accident, or passing condition in a world of matter, 
because mind was really nearer to himself : it was an 
explanation of what was less known by what was known 
better. The purely material world, that close, impassable 
prison -wall, seemed just then the unreal thing, to be 
actually dissolving away all around him : and he felt a 
quiet hope, a quiet joy dawning faintly, in the dawning 
of this doctrine upon him as a reafly credible opinion. 
It was like the break of day over some vast prospect with 
the " new city," as it were some celestial New Rome, in 
the midst of it. That divine companion figured no 
longer as but an occasional wayfarer beside him ; but 
rather as the unfailing " assistant," without whose inspira- 
tion and concurrence he could not breathe or see, instru- 
menting his bodily senses, rounding, supporting his 
imperfect thoughts. How often had the thought of their 



XIX MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 237 

brevity spoiled for him the most natural pleasures of life, 
confusing even his present sense of them by the suggest- 
ion of disease, of death, of a coming end, in everything ! 
How had he longed, sometimes, that there were indeed 
one to whose boundless power of memory he could 
commit his own most fortunate moments, his admiration, 
his love, Ay ! the very sorrows of which he could not 
bear quite to lose the sense : — one strong to retain them 
even though he forgot, in whose more vigorous con- 
sciousness they might subsist for ever, beyond that mere 
quickening of capacity which was all that remained of 
them in himself ! " Oh ! that they might live before 
Thee " — To-day at least, in the peculiar clearness of one 
privileged hour, he seemed to have apprehended that in 
which the experiences he valued most might find, one by 
one, an abiding-place. And again, the resultant sense of 
companionship, of a person beside him, evoked the 
faculty of conscience — of conscience, as of old and when 
he had been at his best, in the form, not of fear, nor of 
self-reproach even, but of a certain lively gratitude. 

Himself — his sensations and ideas — never fell again 
precisely into focus as on that day, yet he was the richer 
by its experience. But for once only to have come 
under the power of that peculiar mood, to have felt the 
train of reflections which belong to it really forcible and 
conclusive, to have been led by them to a conclusion, 
to have apprehended the Great Ideal, so palpably that 
it defined personal gratitude and the sense of a friendly 
hand laid upon him amid the shadows of the world, left 
this one particular hour a marked point in life never to 
be forgotten. -It gave him a definitely ascertained 
measure of his moral or intellectual need, of the demand 
his soul must make upon the powers, whatsoever they 
might be, which had brought him, as he was, into the 
world at all. And again, would he be faithful to himself, 
to his own habits of mind, his leading suppositions, if he 



238 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap, xo 

did but remain just there ? Must not all that remained 
of life be but a search for the equivalent of that Ideal, 
among so-called actual things — a gathering together of 
every trace or token of it, which his actual experience 
might present? 



PART THE FOURTH 



i 



CHAPTER XX 

TWO CURIOUS HOUSES 
L GUESTS 

"Your old men shall dream dreams." 

A NATURE like that of Marius, composed, in about 
equal parts, of instincts almost physical, and of slowly 
accumulated intellectual judgments, was perhaps even 
less susceptible than other men's characters of essential 
change. And yet the experience of that fortunate hour, 
seeming to gather into one central act of vision all the 
deeper impressions his mind had ever received, did not 
leave him quite as he had been. For his mental view, 
at least, it changed measurably the world about him, of 
which he was still indeed a curious spectator, but which 
looked further off, was weaker in its hold, and, in a 
sense, less real to him than ever. It was as if he viewed 
it through a diminishing glass. And the permanency of 
this change he could note, some years later, when it 
happened that he was a guest at a feast, in which the 
various exciting elements ot Roman life, its physical and 
intellectual accomplishments, its frivolity and far-fetched 
elegances, its strange, mystic essays after the unseen, 
were elaborately combined. The great Apuleius, the 

R 



242 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

literary ideal of his boyhood, had arrived in Rome, — 
was now visiting Tusculum, at the house of their 
common friend, a certain aristocratic poet who loved 
every sort of superiorities ; and Marius was favoured 
with an invitation to a supper given in his honour. 

It was with a feeling of half-humorous concession to 
his own early boyish hero-worship, yet with some sense 
of superiority in himself, seeing his old curiosity grown 
now almost to indifference when on the point of satisfac- 
tion at last, and upon a juster estimate of its object, that 
he mounted to the httle town on the hillside, the foot- 
ways of which were so many flights of easy-going steps 
gathered round a single great house under shadow of the 
" haunted " ruins of Cicero's villa on the wooded heights. 
He found a touch of weirdness in the circumstance that 
in so romantic a place he had been bidden to meet the 
writer who was come to seem almost like one of the per- 
sonages in his own fiction. As he turned now and then 
to gaze at the evening scene through the tall narrow 
openings of the street, up which the cattle were going 
home slowly from the pastures below, the Alban moun- 
tains, stretched between the great walls of the ancient 
houses, seemed close at hand — a screen of vaporous dun 
purple against the setting sun — with those waves of surpass- 
ing softness in the boundary lines which indicate volcanic 
formation. The coolness of the little brown market-place, 
for profit of which even the working-people, in long file 
through the olive-gardens, were leaving the plain for the 
night, was grateful, after the heats of Rome. Those wild 
country figures, clad in every kind of fantastic patchwork, 
stained by wind and weather fortunately enough for the 
eye, under that significant light inclined him to poetry. 
And it was a very delicate poetry of its kind that seemed 
to enfold him, as passing into the poet's house he 
paused for a moment to glance back towards the heights 
above ; whereupon, the numerous cascades of the 



XX MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 



243 



precipitous garden of the villa, framed in the doorway 
of the hall, fell into a harmless picture, in its place 
among the pictures within, and scarcely more real than 
they — a landscape-piece, in which the power of water 
(plunging into what unseen depths !) done to the life, 
was pleasant, and without its natural terrors. 

At the further end of this bland apartment, fragrant 
with the rare woods of the old inlaid panelling, the 
falling of aromatic oil from the ready-lighted lamps, the 
iris-root clinging to the dresses of the guests, as with 
odours from the altars of the gods, the supper-table was 
spread, in all the daintiness characteristic of the agree- 
able petit -?nattre, who entertained. He was already 
most carefully dressed, but, like Martial's Stella, perhaps 
consciously, meant to change his attire once and again 
during the banquet ; in the last instance, for an ancient 
vesture (object of much rivalry among the young men of 
fashion, at that great sale of the imperial wardrobes) a 
toga, of altogether lost hue and texture. He wore it 
with a grace which became the leader of a thrilling 
movement then on foot for the restoration of that 
disused garment, in which, laying aside the customary 
evening dress, all the visitors were requested to appear, 
setting off the delicate sinuosities and well-disposed 
"golden ways" of its folds, with harmoniously tinted 
flowers. The opulent sunset, blending pleasantly with 
artificial light, fell across the quiet ancestral effigies of 
old consular dignitaries, along the wide floor strewn with 
sawdust of sandal-wood, and lost itself in the heap of 
cool coronals, lying ready for the foreheads of the guests 
on a sideboard of old citron. The crystal vessels 
darkened with old wine, the hues of the early autumn 
fruit — mulberries, pomegranates, and grapes that had long 
been hanging under careful protection upon the vines, 
were almost as much a feast for the eye, as the dusky fires 
of the rare twelve-petalled roses. A favourite animal, 



244 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap, 

white as snow, brought by one of the visitors, purred its 
way gracefully among the wine -cups, coaxed onward 
from place to place by those at table, as they reclined 
easily on their cushions of German eider-down, spread 
over the long-legged, carved couches. 

A highly refined modification of the acroama — a 
musical performance during supper for the diversion of 
the guests — was presently heard hovering round the 
place, soothingly, and so unobtrusively that the company 
could not guess, and did not like to ask, whether or not 
it had been designed by their entertainer. They 
inclined on the whole to think it some wonderful peasant- 
music peculiar to that wild neighbourhood, turning, as it 
did now and then, to a solitary reed-note, like a bird's, 
while it wandered into the distance. It wandered quite 
away at last, as darkness with a bolder lamplight came 
on, and made way for another sort of entertainment 
An odd, rapid, phantasmal glitter, advancing from the 
garden by torchlight, defined itself, as it came nearer, 
into a dance of young men in armour. Arrived at 
length in a portico, open to the supper-chamber, they 
contrived that their mechanical march-movement should 
fall out into a kind of highly expressive dramatic action ; 
and with the utmost possible emphasis of dumb motion, 
their long swords weaving a silvery network in the air, 
they danced the Death of Paris. The young Commodus, 
already an adept in these matters, who had condescended 
to welcome the eminent Apuleius at the banquet, had 
mysteriously dropped from his place to take his share in the 
performance ; and at its conclusion reappeared, still wear- 
ing the dainty accoutrements of Paris, including a breast- 
plate, composed entirely of overlapping tigers' claws, 
skilfully gilt. The youthful prince had lately assumed 
the dress of manhood, on the return of the emperor for 
a brief visit from the North ; putting up his hair, in 
imitation of Nero, in a golden box dedicated to Capitoline 



XX MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 



243 



Jupiter. His likeness to Aurelius, his father, was 
become, in consequence, more striking than ever ; and 
he had one source of genuine interest in the great 
literary guest of the occasion, in that the latter was the 
fortunate possessor of a monopoly for the exhibition of 
wild beasts and gladiatorial shows in the province of 
Carthage, where he resided. 

Still, after all complaisance to the perhaps somewhat 
crude tastes of the emperor's son, it was felt that with 
a guest like Apuleius whom they had come prepared 
to entertain as veritable connoisseurs, the conversation 
should be learned and superior, and the host at last 
deftly led his company round to hterature, by the way 
of bindings. Elegant rolls of manuscript from his fine 
library of ancient Greek books passed from hand to 
hand about the table. It was a sign for the visitors 
themselves to draw their own choicest literary curiosities 
from their bags, as their contribution to the banquet ; 
and one of them, a famous reader, choosing his lucky 
moment, delivered in tenor voice the piece which follows, 
with a preliminary query as to whether it could indeed 
be the composition of Lucian of Samosata, understood 
to be the great mocker of that day : — 

" What sound was that, Socrates ? " asked Chaerephon. 
" It came from the beach under the cliff yonder, and 
seemed a long way off. — And how melodious it was ! 
Was it a bird, I wonder. I thought all sea-birds were 
songless." 

"Aye! a sea-bird," answered Socrates, "a bird 
called the Halcyon, and has a note full of plaining and 
tears. There is an old story people tell of it. It was a 
mortal woman once, daughter of y^olus, god of the 
winds. Ceyx, the son of the morning-star, wedded her 
in her early maidenhood. The son was not less fair 
than the father ; and when it came to pass that he died, 
the cr}nng of the girl as she lamented his sweet usage, 



246 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

was, — Just that ! And some while after, as Heaven 
willed, she was changed into a bird. Floating now on 
bird's wings over the sea she seeks her lost Ceyx there ; 
since she was not able to find him after long wandering 
over the land." 

"That then is the Halcyon — the kingfisher," said 
Chaerephon. " I never heard a bird like it before. 
It has truly a plaintive note. What kind of a bird is it, 
Socrates ? " 

" Not a large bird, though she has received large 
honour from the gods on account of her singular con- 
jugal aff"ection. For whensoever she makes her nest, a 
law of nature brings round what is called Halcyon's 
weather, — days distinguishable among all others for 
their serenity, though they come sometimes amid the 
storms of winter — days like to-day ! See how trans- 
parent is the sky above us, and how motionless the sea ! 
— like a smooth mirror." 

" True ! A Halcyon day, indeed ! and yesterday 
was the same. But tell me, Socrates, what is one to 
think of those stories which have been told from the 
beginning, of birds changed into mortals and mortals into 
birds ? To me nothing seems more incredible. " 

" Dear Chasrephon," said Socrates, " methinks we are 
but half-bhnd judges of the impossible and the possible. 
We try the question by the standard of our human faculty, 
which avails neither for true knowledge, nor for faith, 
nor vision. Therefore many things seem to us im- 
possible which are really easy, many things unattainable 
which are within our reach ; partly through inexperience, 
partly through the childishness of our minds. For in 
truth, every man, even the oldest of us, is like a little 
child, so brief and babyish are the years of our life in 
comparison of eternity. Then, how can we, who com- 
prehend not the faculties of gods and of the heavenly 
host, tell whether aught of that kind be possible or no ? — 



XX MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 



247 



What a tempest you saw three days ago ! One trembles 
bat to think of the lightning, the thunderclaps, the 
violence of the wind ! You might have thought the 
whole world was going to ruin. And then, after a little, 
came this wonderful serenity of weather, which has con- 
tinued till to-day. Which do you think the greater and 
more difficult thing to do : — to exchange the disorder of 
that irresistible whirlwind to a clarity like this, and be- 
calm the whole world again, or to refashion the form of 
a woman into that of a bird ? We can teach even little 
children to do something of that sort, — to take wax or 
clay, and mould out of the same material many kinds of 
form, one after another, without difficulty. And it may 
be that to the Deity, whose power is too vast for com- 
parison with ours, all processes of that kind are manage- 
able and easy. How much wider is the whole circle of 
heaven than thyself? — Wider than thou canst express. 

" Among ourselves also, how vast the difference we 
may observe in men's degrees of power ! To you and 
me, and many another like us, many things are im- 
possible which are quite easy to others. For those who 
are unmusical, to play on the flute ; to read or write, for 
those who have not yet learned ; is no easier than to 
make birds of women, or women of birds. From the 
dumb and lifeless egg Nature moulds her swarms of 
winged creatures, aided, as some will have it, by a 
divine and secret art in the wide air around us. She 
takes from the honeycomb a little memberless live thing ; 
she brings it wings and feet, brightens and beautifies it 
with quaint variety of colour : — and Lo ! the bee in her 
wisdom, making honey worthy of the gods. 

" It follows, that we mortals, being altogether of little 
account, able wholly to discern no great matter, sometimes 
not even a little one, for the most part at a loss regard- 
ing what happens even with ourselves, may hardly speak 
with security as to what may be the powers of the im- 



248 MAKIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

mortal gods concerning Kingfisher, or Nightingale. 
Yet the glory of thy mythus, as my fathers bequeathed 
it to me, O tearful songstress ! that will I too hand on 
to my children, and tell it often to my wives, Xanthippe 
and Myrto : — the story of thy pious love to Ceyx, and 
of thy melodious hymns ; and, above all, of the honour 
thou hast with the gods ! " 

The reader's well-turned periods seemed to stimulate, 
almost uncontrollably, the eloquent stirrings of the 
eminent man of letters then present. The impulse to 
speak masterfully was visible, before the recital was well 
over, in the moving lines about his mouth, by no means 
designed, as detractors were wont to say, simply to dis- 
play the beauty of his teeth. One of the company, expert 
in his humours, made ready to transcribe what he would 
say, the sort of things of which a collection was then 
forming, the " Florida " or Flowers, so to call them, he 
was apt to let fall by the way — no improi7iptu ventures at 
random ; but rather elaborate, carved ivories of speech, 
drawn, at length, out of the rich treasure-house of a 
memory stored with such, and as with a fine savour of old 
musk about them. Certainly in this case, as Marius 
thought, it was worth while to hear a charmingwriter speak. 
Discussing, quite in our modern way, the peculiarities of 
those suburban views, especially the sea-views, of which 
he was a professed lover, he was also every inch a priest 
of Aesculapius, patronal god of Carthage. There was a 
piquancy in his rococo^ very African, and as it were per- 
fumed personality, though he was now well-nigh sixty years 
old, a mixture there of that sort of Platonic spiritualism 
which can speak of the soul of man as but a sojourner 
in the prison of the body — a blending of that with such 
a relish for merely bodily graces as availed to set the 
fashion in matters of dress, deportment, accent, and the 
like, nay ! with something also which reminded Marius 
of the vein of coarseness he had found in the " Golden 



XX MARIUS TIIK KI'ICUKEAN 249 

Book." All this made the total impression he conveyed 
a very uncommon one. Mariiis did not wonder, as he 
watched him speaking, that people freely attributed to 
him many of the marvellous adventures he had recounted 
in that famous romance, over and above the wildest 
version of his own actual story — his extraordinary 
marriage, his religious initiations, his acts of mad gener- 
osity, his trial as a sorcerer. 

But a sign came from the imperial prince that it was 
time for the company to separate. He was entertaining 
his immediate neighbours at the table with a trick from 
the streets ; tossing his olives in rapid succession into 
the air, and catching them, as they fell, between his lips. 
His dexterity in this performance made the mirth around 
him noisy, disturbing the sleep of the furry visitor : the 
learned party broke up ; and Marius withdrew, glad to 
escape into the open air. The courtesans in their large 
wigs of false blond hair, were lurking for the guests, 
with groups of curious idlers. A great conflagration was 
visible in the distance. Was it in Rome ; or in one of 
the villages of the country ? Pausing for a few minutes 
on the terrace to watch it, Marius was for the first time 
able to converse intimately with Apuleius ; and in this 
moment of confidence the " illuminist," himself with 
locks so carefully arranged, and seemingly so full of 
affectations, almost like one of those light women there, 
dropped a veil as it were, and api)eared, though still 
permitting the play of a certain element of theatrical 
interest in his bizarre tenets, to be ready to exjilain and 
defend his jjosition reasonably. For a moment his 
fantastic foppishness and his jjretensions to ideal vision 
seemed to fall into some intelligible congruity with each 
other. In truth, it was the Platonic Idealism, as he 
conceived it, which for him literally animated, and gave 
him so lively an interest in, this world of the purely 
outward aspects of men and things. — Did material things, 



250 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

such things as they had had around them all that 
evening, really need apology for being there, to interest 
one, at all ? Were not all visible objects — the whole 
material world indeed, according to the consistent testi- 
mony of philosophy in many forms — " full of souls " ? 
embarrassed perhaps, partly imprisoned, but still eloquent 
souls ? Certainly, the contemplative philosophy of Plato, 
with its figurative imagery and apologue, its manifold 
aesthetic colouring, its measured eloquence, its music for 
the outward ear, had been, like Plato's old master him- 
self, a two-sided or two-coloured thing. Apuleius was a 
Platonist : only, for him, the Ideas of Plato were no 
creatures of logical abstraction, but in very truth informing 
souls, in every type and variety of sensible things. Those 
noises in the house all supper-time, sounding through 
the tables and along the walls : — were they only startings 
in the old rafters, at the impact of the music and laughter; 
or rather importunities of the secondary selves, the true 
unseen selves, of the persons, nay ! of the very things 
around, essaying to break through their frivolous, merely 
transitory surfaces, to remind one of abiding essentials 
beyond them, which might have their say, their judgment 
to give, by and by, when the shifting of the meats and 
drinks at life's table would be over? And was not 
this the true significance of the Platonic doctrine? — a 
hierarchy of divine beings, associating themselves with 
particular things and places, for the purpose of mediating 
between God and man — man, who does but need due 
attention on his part to become aware of his celestial 
company, filling the air about him, thick as motes in the 
sunbeam, for the glance of sympathetic intelligence he 
casts through it. 

"Two kinds there are, of animated beings," he ex- 
claimed : " Gods, entirely differing from men in the 
infinite distance of their abode, since one part of them 
only is seen by our blunted vision — those mysterious 



XX MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 251 

stars ! — in the eternity of their existence, in the perfection 
of their nature, infected by no contact with ourselves : 
and men, dweUing on the earth, with frivolous and 
anxious minds, with infirm and mortal members, with 
variable fortunes ; labouring in vain ; taken altogether 
and in their whole species perhaps, eternal ; but, sever- 
ally, quitting the scene in irresistible succession. 

" What then ? Has nature connected itself together 
by no bond, allowed itself to be thus crippled, and split 
into the divine and human elements? And you will 
say to me : If so it be, that man is thus entirely exiled 
from the immortal gods, that all communication is denied 
him, that riot one of them occasionally visits us, as a 
shepherd his sheep — to whom shall I address my prayers? 
Whom shall I invoke as the helper of the unfortunate, 
the protector of the good ? 

" Well ! there are certain divine powers of a middle 
nature, through whom our aspirations are conveyed to the 
gods, and theirs to us. Passing between the inhabitants 
of earth and heaven, they carry from one to the other 
prayers and bounties, supplication and assistance, being 
a kind of interpreters. This interval of the air is full of 
them ! Through them, all revelations, miracles, magic 
processes, are effected. For, specially appointed members 
of this order have their special provinces, with a ministry 
according to the disposition of each. They go to and fro 
without fixed habitation : or dw^ell in men's houses " — 

Just then a companion's hand laid in the darkness on 
the shoulder of the speaker carried him away, and the 
discourse broke off suddenly. Its singular intimations, 
however, were sufficient to throw back on this strange 
evening, in all its detail — the dance, the readings, the 
distant fire — a kind of allegoric expression : gave it the 
character of one of those famous Platonic figures or 
apologues which had then been in fact under discus- 
sion. When Marius recalled its circumstances he seemed 



252 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap xx 

tc hear once more that voice of genuine conviction, 
[)leading, from amidst a scene at best of elegant frivolity, 
for so boldly mystical a view of man and his position in 
the world. For a moment, but only for a moment, sa 
he listened, the trees had seemed, as of old, to be 
growing "close against the sky." Yes ! the reception of 
theory, of hypothesis, of beliefs, did depend a great deal 
on temperament. They were, so to speak, mere equiva- 
lents of temperament. A celestial ladder, a ladder from 
heaven to earth : that was the assumption which the 
experience of Apuleius had suggested to him : it was 
what, in different forms, certain persons in every age had 
instinctively supposed : they would be glad to find their 
supposition accredited by the authority of a grave philo- 
sophy. Marius, however, yearning not less than they, 
in that hard world of Rome, and below its unpeopled 
sky, for the trace of some celestial wing across it, must 
still object that they assumed the thing with too much 
facility, too much of self-complacency. And his second 
thought was, that to indulge but for an hour fantasies, 
fantastic visions of that sort, only left the actual world 
more lonely than ever. For him certainly, and for his 
solace, the little godship for whom the rude countryman, an 
unconscious Platonist, trimmed his twinkling lamp, would 
never slip from the bark of these immemorial olive-trees. 
— No 1 not even in the wildest moonlight. For him- 
self, it was clear, he must still hold by what his eyes really 
saw. Only, he had to concede also, that the very bold- 
ness of such theory bore witness, at least, to a variety of 
human disposition and a consequent variety of mental 
view, which might — who could tell ? — be correspondent 
to, be defined by and define, varieties of facts, of truths, 
just "behind the veil," regarding the world all alike had 
actually before them as their original premiss or starting- 
point ; a world, wider, perhaps, in its possibilities, than 
all possible fancies concerning it. 



CHAPTER XXI 

TWO CURIOUS HOUSES 

II. THE CHURCH IN CECILIA's HOUSE 

** Your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall 
see visions." 

Cornelius had certain friends in or near Rome, whose 
household, to Marius, as he pondered now and again 
what might be the determining influences of that 
pecuhar character, presented itself as possibly its main 
secret — the hidden source from which the beauty and 
strength of a nature, so persistently fresh in the midst 
of a somewhat jaded world, might be derived. But 
Marius had never yet seen these friends ; and it was 
almost by accident that the veil of reserve was at last 
lifted, and, with strange contrast to his visit to the poet's 
villa at Tusculum, he entered another curious house. 

"The house in which she lives," says that mystical 
German writer quoted once before, "is for the orderly 
soul, which does not live on blindly before her, but is 
ever, out of her passing experiences, building and 
adorning the parts of a many- roomed abode for her- 
self, only an expansion of the body ; as the body, 
according to the philosophy of Swedenborg, is but a 
process, an expansion, of the soul. For such an orderly 



254 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

soul, as life proceeds, all sorts of delicate affinities 
establish themselves, between herself and the doors and 
passage-ways, the lights and shadows, of her outward 
dwelling-place, until she may seem incorporate with it — 
until at last, in the entire expressiveness of what is out- 
ward, there is for her, to speak properly, between out- 
ward and inward, no longer any distinction at all ; and 
the light which creeps at a particular hour on a particular 
picture or space upon the wall, the scent of flowers in 
the air at a particular window, become to her, not so 
much apprehended objects, as themselves powers of 
apprehension and doorways to things beyond — the germ 
or rudiment of certain new faculties, by which she, dimly 
yet surely, apprehends a matter lying beyond her actually 
attained capacities of spirit and sense." 

So it must needs be in a world which is itself, we 
may think, together with that bodily " tent " or 
" tabernacle," only one of many vestures for the clothing 
of the pilgrim soul, to be left by her, surely, as if on the 
wayside, worn-out one by one, as it was from her, indeed, 
they borrowed what momentary value or significance 
they had. 

The two friends were returning to Rome from a visit 
to a country-house, where again a mixed company of 
guests had been assembled ; Marius, for his part, a little 
weary of gossip, and those sparks of ill-tempered rivalry, 
which would seem sometimes to be the only sort of fire 
the intercourse of people in general society can strike 
out of them. A mere reaction upon this, as they started 
in the clear morning, made their companionship, at least 
for one of them, hardly less tranquillising than the soli- 
tude he so much valued. Something in the south-west 
wind, combining with their own intention, favoured in- 
creasingly, as the hours wore on, a serenity like that 
Marius had felt once before in journeying over the great 
plain towards Tibur — a serenity that was to-day brotherly 



XXI MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 255 

amity also, and seemed to draw into its own charmed 
circle whatever was then present to eye or ear, while they 
talked or were silent together, and all petty irritations, and 
the like, shrank out of existence, or kept certainly beyond 
its limits. The natural fatigue of the long journey over- 
came them quite suddenly at last, when they were still 
about two miles distant from Rome. The seemingly 
endless line of tombs and cypresses had been visible for 
hours against the sky towards the west ; and it was just 
where a cross-road from the Latin Way fell into the 
Appian, that Cornelius halted at a doorway in a long, 
low wall — the outer wall of some villa courtyard, it might 
be supposed — as if at liberty to enter, and rest there 
awhile. He held the door open for his companion to 
enter also, if he would ; with an expression, as he lifted 
the latch, which seemed to ask Marius, apparently shrink- 
ing from a possible intrusion: "Would you like to see 
it ? " Was he willing to look upon that, the seeing of 
which might define — yes ! define the critical turning- 
point in his days ? 

The little doorway in this long, low wall admitted them, 
in fact, into the court or garden of a villa, disposed in 
one of those abrupt natural hollows, which give its 
character to the country in this place ; the house itself, 
with all its dependent buildings, the spaciousness of 
which surprised Marius as he entered, being thus wholly 
concealed from passengers along the road. All around, 
in those well-ordered precincts, were the quiet signs of 
wealth, and of a noble taste — a taste, indeed, chiefly 
evidenced in the selection and juxtaposition of the 
material it had to deal with, consisting almost exclusively 
ofthe remains of older art, here arranged and harmonised, 
with effects, both as regards colour and form, so delicate 
as to seem really derivative from some finer intelligence 
in these matters than lay within the resources of the 
ancient world. It was the old way of true Renaissance — 



256 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

being indeed the way of nature with her roses, the divine 
way with the body of man, perhaps with his soul — con- 
ceiving the new organism by no sudden and abrupt 
creation, but rather by the action of a new principle 
upon elements, all of which had in truth already lived 
and died many times. The fragments of older archi- 
tecture, the mosaics, the spiral columns, the precious 
corner-stones of immemorial building, had put on, by 
such juxtaposition, a new and singular expressiveness, an 
air of grave thought, of an intellectual purpose, in itself, 
aesthetically, very seductive. Lastly, herb and tree had 
taken possession, spreading their seed-bells and light 
branches, just astir in the trembling air, above the ancient 
garden-wall, against the wide realms of sunset. And 
from the first they could hear singing, the singing of 
children mainly, it would seem, and of a new kind ; so 
novel indeed in its effect, as to bring suddenly to the 
recollection of Marius, Flavian's early essays towards a 
new world of poetic sound. It was the expression not 
altogether of mirth, yet of some wonderful sort of happi- 
ness — the blithe self-expansion of a joyful soul in people 
upon whom some all-subduing experience had wrought 
heroically, and who still remembered, on this bland 
afternoon, the hour of a great deliverance. 

His old native susceptibility to the spirit, the special 
sympathies, of places, — above all, to any hieratic or reli- 
gious significance they might have, — was at its liveliest, 
as Marius, still encompassed by that peculiar singing, and 
still amid the evidences of a grave discretion all around 
him, passed into the house. That intelligent seriousness 
about life, the absence of which had ever seemed to 
remove those who lacked it into some strange species 
wholly alien from himself, accumulating all the lessons of 
his experience since those first days at White-nights, was 
as it were translated here, as if in designed congruity with 
his favourite precepts of the power of physical vision, 



XXI MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 257 

into an actual picture. If the true value of souls is in pro- 
portion to what they can admire, Marius was just then 
an acceptable soul. As he passed through the various 
chambers, great and small, one dominant thought in- 
creased upon him, the thought of chaste women and 
their children — of all the various affections of family life 
under its most natural conditions, yet developed, as if in 
devout imitation of some sublime new type of it, into 
large controlling passions. There reigned throughout, 
an order and purity, an orderly disposition, as if by way 
of making ready for some gracious spousals. The place 
itself was like a bride adorned for her husband ; and its 
singular cheerfulness, the abundant light everywhere, the 
sense of peaceful industry, of which he received a deep 
impression though without precisely reckoning wherein 
it resided, as he moved on rapidly, were in forcible con- 
trast just at first to the place to which he was next con- 
ducted by Cornelius still with a sort of eager, hurried, 
half- troubled reluctance, and as if he forbore the 
explanation which might well be looked for by his 
companion. 

An old flower-garden in the rear of the house, set here 
and there with a venerable olive-tree — a picture in 
pensive shade and fiery blossom, as transparent, under 
that afternoon light, as the old miniature-painters' work 
on the walls of the chambers within — was bounded 
towards the west by a low, grass-grown hill. A narrow 
opening cut in its steep side, hke a solid blackness there, 
admitted Marius and his gleaming leader into a hollow 
cavern or crypt, neither more nor less in fact than the 
family burial-place of the Cecilii, to whom this residence 
belonged, brought thus, after an arrangement then 
becoming not unusual, into immediate connexion with 
the abode of the living, in bold assertion of that instinct 
of family life, which the sanction of the Holy Family 
was. hereafter, more and more to reinforce. Here, in 



258 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

truth, was the centre of the pecuHar religious expressive- 
ness, of the sanctity, of the entire scene. That "any 
person may, at his own election, constitute the place 
which belongs to him a religious place, by the carrying of 
his dead into it : " — had been a maxim of old Roman 
law, which it was reserved for the early Christian societies, 
like that established here by the piety of a wealthy Roman 
matron, to realise in all its consequences. Yet this was 
certainly unlike any cemetery Marius had ever before 
seen; most obviously in this, that these people had 
returned to the older fashion of disposing of their dead 
by burial instead of burning. Originally a family 
sepulchre, it was growing to a vast necropolis^ a whole 
township of the deceased, by means of some free ex- 
pansion of the family interest beyond its amplest natural 
limits. That air of venerable beauty which characterised 
the house and its precincts above, was maintained also 
here. It was certainly with a great outlay of labour that 
these long, apparently endless, yet elaborately designed 
galleries, were increasing so rapidly, with their layers of 
beds or berths, one above another, cut, on either side 
the pathway, in the porus tufa, through which all thie 
moisture filters downwards, leaving the parts above dry 
and wholesome. All alike were carefully closed, and with 
all the delicate costliness at command; some with simple 
tiles of baked clay, many with slabs of marble, enriched 
by fair inscriptions : marble taken, in some cases, from 
older pagan tombs — the inscription sometimes d, palimp- 
sest, the new epitaph being woven into the faded letters 
of an earlier one. 

As in an ordinary Roman cemetery, an abundance of 
utensils for the worship or commemoration of the departed 
was disposed around — incense, lights, flowers, their flame 
or their freshness being relieved to the utmost by contrast 
with the coal-like blackness of the soil itself, a volcanic 
sandstone, cinder of burnt-out fires. Would they ever 



XXI MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 259 

kindle again ? — possess, transform, the place ? — Turning 
to an ashen pallor where, at regular intervals, an air-hole 
or luminare let in a hard beam of clear but .sunless light, 
with the heavy sleepers, row upon row within, leaving a 
passage so narrow that only one visitor at a time could 
move along, cheek to cheek with them, the high walls 
seemed to shut one in into the great company of the 
dead. Only the long straight pathway lay before him ; 
opening, however, here and there, into a small chamber, 
around a broad, table-like coffin or "altar-tomb," adorned 
even more profusely than the rest as if for some anniver- 
sary observance. Clearly, these people, concurring in 
this with the special sympathies of Marius himself, had 
adopted the practice of burial from some peculiar feeling 
of hope they entertained concerning the body ; a feeling 
which, in no irreverent curiosity, he would fain have 
penetrated. The complete and irreparable disappearance 
of the dead in the funeral fire, so crushing to the spirits, 
as he for one had found it, had long since induced in him 
a preference for that other mode of settlement to the last 
sleep, as having something about it more homelike and 
hopeful, at least in outward seeming. But whence the 
strange confidence that these " handfuls of white dust '' 
would hereafter re-compose themselves once more into 
exulting human creatures ? By what heavenly alchemy, 
what reviving dew from above, such as was certainly 
never again to reach the dead violets ? — Januartus, 
Agapetus^ Felicitas ; Martyrs ! refresh^ I pray you, the 
soul of Cecil, of Cornelius/ said an inscription, one of 
many, scratched, hke a passing sigh, when it was still 
fresh in the mortar that had closed up the prison- 
door. All critical estimate of this bold hope, as 
sincere apparently as it was audacious in its claim, 
being set aside, here at least, carried further than 
ever before, was that pious, systematic commemoration 
of the dead, which, in its chivalrous refusal to forget 



26o MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

or finally desert the helpless, had ever counted with 
Marius as the central exponent or symbol of all natural 
duty. 

The stern soul of the excellent Jonathan Edwards, apply- 
ing the faulty theology of John Calvin, afforded him, we 
know, the vision of infants not a span long, on the floor of 
hell. Every visitor to the Catacombs must have observed, 
in a very different theological connexion, the numerous 
children's graves there — beds of infants, but a span 
long indeed, lowly " prisoners of hope," on these sacred 
floors. It was with great curiosity, certainly, that 
Marius considered them, decked in some instances with 
the favourite toys of their tiny occupants — toy-soldiers, 
little chariot-wheels, the entire paraphernalia of a baby- 
house ; and when he saw afterwards the living children, 
who sang and were busy above — sang their psalm 
Laudate Pueri Dominum ! — their very faces caught for 
him a sort of quaint unreality from the memory of those 
others, the children of the Catacombs, but a little way 
below them. 

Here and there, mingling with the record of merely 
natural decease, and sometimes even at these children's 
graves, were the signs of violent death or " martyrdom," 
— proofs that some "had loved not their lives unto the 
death" — in the little red phial of blood, the palm- 
branch, the red flowers for their heavenly " birthday." 
About one sepulchre in particular, distinguished in this 
way, and devoutly arrayed for what, by a bold paradox, 
was thus treated as, natalitia — a birthday, the peculiar 
arrangements of the whole place visibly centered. And 
it was with a singular novelty of feeling, like the dawning 
of a fresh order of experiences upon him, that, standing 
beside those mournful relics, snatched in haste from the 
common place of execution not many years before, Marius 
became, as by some gleam of foresight, aware of the 
whole force of evidence for a certain strange, new hope, 



XXI MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 261 

defining in its turn some new and weighty motive of 
action, which lay in deaths so tragic for the " Christian 
superstition." Something of them he had heard indeed 
already. They had seemed to him but one savagery the 
more, savagery self-provoked, in a cruel and stupid world. 
And yet these poignant memorials seemed also to 
draw him onwards to-day, as if towards an image of 
some still more pathetic suffering, in the remote back- 
ground. Yes ! the interest, the expression, of the 
entire neighbourhood was instinct with it, as with the 
savour of some priceless incense. Penetrating the 
whole atmosphere, touching everything around with its 
peculiar sentiment, it seemed to make all this visible 
mortality, death's very self — Ah ! lovelier than any fable 
of old mythology had ever thought to render it, in the 
utmost limits of fantasy ; and this, in simple candour of 
feeling about a supposed fact. Peace! Pax 1 Pax 
tecum I — the word, the thought — was put forth every- 
where, with images of hope, snatched sometimes from 
that jaded pagan world which had really afforded men 
so little of it from first to last ; the various consoling 
images it had thrown off, of succour, of regeneration, of 
escape from the grave — Hercules wrestling with Death 
for possession of Alcestis, Orpheus taming the wild 
beasts, the Shepherd with his sheep, the Shepherd 
carrying the sick lamb upon his shoulders. Yet these 
imageries after all, it must be confessed, formed but a 
slight contribution to the dominant effect of tranquil 
hope there — a kind of heroic cheerfulness and grate- 
ful expansion of heart, as with the sense, again, of 
some real deliverance, which seemed to deepen the 
longer one lingered through these strange and awful 
passages. A figure, partly pagan in character, yet most 
frequently repeated of all these visible parables — the 
figure of one just escaped from the sea, still cHnging as 
for life to the shore in surprised joy, together with the 



262 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

inscription beneath it, seemed best to express the 
prevailing sentiment of the place. And it was just as 
he had puzzled out this inscription — 

/ wetit down to the bottom of the mountains . 
The earth rvith her bars was about me for ever : 
Yet hast Thou h'ought up my life from corruption ! 

— that with no feeling of suddenness or change Marius 
found himself emerging again, like a later mystic 
traveller through similar dark places " quieted by hope," 
into the daylight. 

They were still within the precincts of the house, still 
in possession of that wonderful singing, although almost 
in the open country, with a great view of the Campagna 
before them, and the hills beyond. The orchard or 
meadow, through which their path lay, was already gray 
with twilight, though the western sky, where the greater 
stars were visible, was still afloat in crimson splendour. The 
colour of all earthly things seemed repressed by the con- 
trast, yet with a sense of great richness lingering in their 
shadows. At that moment the voice of the singers, a 
"voice of joy and health," concentrated itself with 
solemn antistrophic movement, into an evening, or 
" candle " hymn. 

" Hail ! Heavenly Light, from his pure glory poured, 
Who is the Almighty Father, heavenly, blest : — 
Worthiest art Thou, at all times to be sung 
With undefiled tongue." — 

It was like the evening itself made audible, its hopes 
and fears, with the stars shining in the midst of it. 
Half above, half below the level white mist, dividing 
the light from the darkness, came now the mistress 
of this place, the wealthy Roman matron, left early a 
widow a few years before, by Cecilius " Confessor and 
Saint." With a certain antique severity in the gathering 
of the long mantle, and with coif or veil folded decor- 



XXI MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 263 

ously below the chin, " gray within gray," to the mind 
of Marius her temperate beauty brought reminiscences 
of the serious and virile character of the best female 
statuary of Greece. Quite foreign, however, to any 
Greek statuary was the expression of pathetic care, with 
which she carried a little child at rest in her arms. 
Another, a year or two older, walked beside, the fingers 
of one hand within her girdle. She paused for a 
moment with a greeting for Cornelius. 

That visionary scene was the close, the fitting close, 
of the afternoon's strange experiences. A few .minutes 
later, passing forward on his way along the public road, 
he could have fancied it a dream. The house of Cecilia 
grouped itself beside that other curious house he had 
lately visited at Tusculum. And what a contrast was 
presented by the former, in its suggestions of hopeful 
industry, of immaculate cleanness, of responsive affection ! 
— all alike determined by that transporting discovery of 
some fact, or series of facts, in which the old puzzle of 
life had found its solution. In truth, one of his most 
characteristic and constant traits had ever been a 
certain longing for escape — for some sudden, relieving 
interchange, across the very spaces of life, it might be, 
along which he had lingered most pleasantly — for a 
lifting, from time to time, of the actual horizon. It was 
like the necessity under which the painter finds himself, 
to set a window or open doorway in the background of 
his picture ; or like a sick man's longing for northern 
coolness, and the whispering willow - trees, amid the 
breathless evergreen forests of the south. To some 
such effect had this visit occurred to him, and through 
so slight an accident. Rome and Roman life, just then, 
were come to seem like some stifling forest of bronze- 
work, transformed, as if by malign enchantment, out of 
the generations of living trees, yet with roots in a deep, 
down-trodden soil of poignant human susceptibilities. 



264 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

In the midst of its suffocation, that old longing for 
escape had been satisfied by this vision of the church in 
Cecilia's house, as never before. It was still, indeed, 
according to the unchangeable law of his temperament, 
to the eye, to the visual faculty of mind, that those 
experiences appealed — the peaceful light and shade, the 
boys whose very faces seemed to sing, the virginal 
beauty of the mother and her children. But, in his 
case, what was thus visible constituted a moral or 
spiritual influence, of a somewhat exigent and controlling 
character, added anew to life, a new element therein, 
with which, consistently with his own chosen maxim, he 
must make terms. 

The thirst for every kind of experience, encouraged 
by a philosophy which taught that nothing w^as intrinsi- 
cally great or small, good or evil, had ever been at strife 
in him with a hieratic refinement, in which the boy- 
priest survived, prompting always the selection of what 
was perfect of its kind, with subsequent loyal adherence 
of his soul thereto. This had carried him along in a 
continuous communion with ideals, certainly realised in 
part, either in the conditions of his own being, or in the 
actual company about him, above all, in Cornelius. 
Surely, in this strange new society he had touched upon 
for the first time to-day — in this strange family, like " a 
garden enclosed " — was the fulfilment of all the prefer- 
ences, the judgments, of that half-understood friend, 
which of late years had been his protection so often 
amid the perplexities of life. Here, it might be, was, if 
not the cure, yet the solace or anodyne of his great 
sorrows — of that constitutional sorrowfulness, not 
peculiar to himself perhaps, but which had made his 
life certainly like one long " disease of the spirit.'" 
Merciful intention made itself known remedially here, in 
the mere contact of the air, like a soft touch upon aching 
flesh. On the other hand, he was aware that new 



XXI MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 265 

responsibilities also might be awakened — new and untried 
responsibilities — a demand for something from him in 
return. Might this new vision, like the malignant 
beauty of pagan Medusa, be exclusive of any admiring 
gaze upon anything but itself? At least he suspected 
that, after the beholding of it, he could never again be 
altogether as he had been before. 



CHAPTER XXll 

"the minor peace of the church^' 

Faithful to the spirit of his early Epicurean philosophy 
and the impulse to surrender himself, in perfectly liberal 
inquiry about it, to anything that, as a matter of fact, 
attracted or impressed him strongly, Marius informed 
himself with much pains concerning the church in 
Cecilia's house ; inclining at first to explain the peculi- 
arities of that place by the establishment there of the 
schola or common hall of one of those burial-guilds, which 
then covered so much of the unofficial, and, as it might 
be called, subterranean enterprise of Roman society. 

And what he found, thus looking, literally, for the 
dead among the living, was the vision of a natural, a 
scrupulously natural, love, transforming, by some new 
gift of insight into the truth of human relationships, and 
under the urgency of some new motive by him so far 
unfathomable, all the conditions of life. He saw, in all 
its primitive freshness and amid the lively facts of its 
actual coming into the world, as a reality of experience, 
that regenerate type of humanity, which, centuries later, 
Giotto and his successors, down to the best and purest 
days of the young Raphael, working under conditions 
very friendly to the imagination, were to conceive as an 
artistic ideal. He felt there, felt amid the stirring of 
some wonderful new hope within himself, the genius, the 



CHAP. XXII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 267 

unique power of Christianity ; in exercise then, as it has 
been exercised ever since, in spite of many hindrances, 
and under the most inopportune circumstances. Chastity, 
— as he seemed to understand — the chastity of men and 
women, amid all the conditions, and with the results, 
proper to such chastity, is the most beautiful thing in the 
world and the truest conservation of that creative energy 
by which men and women were first brought into it. 
The nature of the family, for which the better genius of 
old Rome itself had sincerely cared, of the family and 
its appropriate affections — all that love of one's kindred 
by which obviously one does triumph in some degree 
over death — had never been so felt before. Here, surely! 
in its genial warmth, its jealous exclusion of all that was 
opposed to it, to its own immaculate naturalness, in the 
hedge set around the sacred thing on every side, this 
development of the family did but carry forward, and 
give effect to, the purposes, the kindness, of nature itself, 
friendly to man. As if by way of a due recognition of 
some immeasurable divine condescension manifest in a 
certain historic fact, its influence was felt more especially 
at those points which demanded some sacrifice of one's 
self, for the weak, for the aged, for little children, and 
even for the dead. And then, for its constant outward 
token, its significant manner or index, it issued in a 
certain debonair grace, and a certain mystic attractiveness, 
a courtesy, which made Marius doubt whether that famed 
Greek " bhtheness," or gaiety, or grace, in the handling 
of life, had been, after all, an unrivalled success. Con- 
trasting with the incurable insipidity even of what was 
most exquisite in the higher Roman life, of what was still 
truest to the primitive soul of goodness amid its evil, the 
new creation he now looked on — as it were a picture 
beyond the craft of any master of old pagan beauty — 
had indeed all the appropriate freshness of a ''bride 
adorned for her husband." Things new and old 



268 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

seemed to be coming as if out of some goodly treasure- 
house, the brain full of science, the heart rich with 
various sentiment, possessing withal this surprising 
healthfulness, this reality of heart. 

"You would hardly believe," writes Pliny — to his 
own wife ! — " what a longing for you possesses me. 
Habit — that we have not been used to be apart — adds 
herein to the primary force of affection. It is this 
keeps me awake at night fancying I see you beside 
me. That is why my feet take me unconsciously to 
your sitting-room at those hours when I was wont 
to visit you there. That is why I turn from the door 
of the empty chamber, sad and ill-at-ease, like an ex- 
cluded lover." — 

There, is a real idyll from that family life, the pro- 
tection of which had been the motive of so large a 
part of the religion of the Romans, still surviving among 
them ; as it survived also in Aurelius, his disposition and 
aims, and, spite of slanderous tongues, in the attained 
sweetness of his interior life. What Marius had been 
permitted to see was a realisation of such life higher 
still : and with — Yes ! with a more effective sanction and 
motive than it had ever possessed before, in that fact, or 
series of facts, to be ascertained by those who would. 

The central glory of the reign of the Antonines was 
that society had attained in it, though very imperfectly, 
and for the most part by cumbrous effort of law, many 
of those ends to which Christianity went straight, with 
the sufficiency, the success, of a direct and appropriate 
instinct. Pagan Rome, too, had its touching charity- 
sermons on occasions of great public distress ; its charity- 
children in long file, in memory of the elder empress 
Faustina ; its prototype under patronage of Aesculapius, 
of the modern hospital for the sick on the island of Saint 
Bartholomew. But what pagan charity was doing tardily, 
and as if with the painful calculation of old age, the 



XXII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 269 

church was doing, almost without thinking about it, with 
all the liberal enterprise of youth, because it was her very 
being thus to do. "You fail to realise your own good 
intentions," she seems to say, to pagan virtue, pagan 
kindness. She identified herself with those intentions 
and advanced them with an unparalleled freedom and 
largeness. The gentle Seneca would have reverent 
burial provided even for the dead body of a criminal. 
Yet when a certain woman collected for interment 
the insulted remains of Nero, the pagan world surmised 
that she must be a Christian : only a Christian 
would have been likely to conceive so chivalrous a 
devotion towards mere wretchedness. " We refuse to be 
witnesses even of a homicide commanded by the law," 
boasts the dainty conscience of a Christian apologist, 
" we take no part in your cruel sports nor in the spectacles 
of the amphitheatre, and we hold that to witness a murder 
is the same thing as to commit one." And there was 
another duty almost forgotten, the sense of which 
Rousseau brought back to the degenerate society of a 
later age. In an impassioned discourse the sophist 
Favorinus counsels mothers to suckle their own infants ; 
and there are Roman epitaphs erected to mothers, which 
gratefully record this proof of natural affection as a thing 
then unusual. In this matter too, what a sanction, what 
a provocative to natural duty, lay in that image discovered 
to Augustus by the Tiburtine Sibyl, amid the aurora of 
a new age, the image of the Divine Mother and the 
Child, just then rising upon the world like the dawn ! 

Christian belief, again, had presented itself as a great 
inspirer of chastity. Chastity, in turn, realised in the whole 
scope of its conditions, fortified that rehabilitation of peace- 
ful labour, after the mind, the pattern, of the workman 
of Galilee, which was another of the natural instincts 
of the cathohc church, as bemg indeed the long-desired 
initiator of a religion of cheerfulness, as a true lover 0/ 



270 



MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap 



the industry — so to term it — the labour, the creation, 
of God. 

And this severe yet genial assertion ot the ideal of 
woman, of the family, of industry, of man's work in life, 
so close to the truth of nature, was also, in that charmed 
hour of the minor " Peace of the church," realised as an 
influence tending to beauty, to the adornment of life 
and the world. The sword in the world, the right eye 
plucked out, the right hand cut off, the spirit of reproach 
which those images express, and of which monasticism 
is the fulfilment, reflect one side only of the nature of 
the divine missionary of the New Testament. Opposed 
to, yet blent with, this ascetic or militant character, is 
the function of the Good Shepherd, serene, blithe and 
debonair, beyond the gentlest shepherd of Greek mytho- 
logy ; of a king under whom the beatific vision is realised 
of a reign of peace — peace of heart — among men. Such 
aspect of the divine character of Christ, rightly under- 
stood, is indeed the final consummation of that bold and 
brilliant hopefulness in man's nature, which had sustained 
him so far through his immense labours, his immense 
sorrows, and of which pagan gaiety in the handling of 
life, is but a minor achievement. Sometimes one, 
sometimes the other, of those two contrasted aspects 
of its Founder, have, in different ages and under the 
urgency of different human needs, been at work also 
in the Christian Church. Certainly, in that brief 
" Peace of the church " under the Antonines, the spirit 
of a pastoral security and happiness seems to have 
been largely expanded. There, in the early church of 
Rome, was to be seen, and on sufficiently reason- 
able grounds, that satisfaction and serenity on a dis- 
passionate survey of the facts of life, which all hearts had 
desired, though for the most part in vain, contrasting 
itself for Marius, in particular, very forcibly, with the 
imperial philosopher's so heavy burden of unrelieved 



XXII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 271 

melancholy. It was Christianity in its humanity, or 
even its humanism, in its generous hopes for man, its 
common sense and alacrity of cheerful service, its 
sympathy with all creatures, its appreciation of beauty 
and daylight. 

"The angel of righteousness," says the Shepherd oj 
Hernias^ the most characteristic religious book of that 
age, its Pilgrim's Progress — " the angel of righteousness 
is modest and delicate and meek and quiet. Take from 
thyself grief, for (as Hamlet will one day discover) 'tis 
the sister of doubt and ill-temper. Grief is more evil 
than any other spirit of evil, and is most dreadful to the 
servants of God, and beyond all spirits destroyeth man. 
For, as when good news is come to one in grief, 
straightway he forgetteth his former grief, and no longer 
attendeth to anything except the good news which he 
hath heard, so do ye, also ! having received a renewal of 
your soul through the beholding of these good things. 
Put on therefore gladness that hath always favour before 
God, and is acceptable unto Him, and delight thyself in 
it ; for every man that is glad doeth the things that are 
good, and thinketh good thoughts, despising grief." — 
Such were the commonplaces of this new people, among 
whom so much of what Marius had valued most in the 
old world seemed to be under renewal and further pro- 
motion. Some transforming spirit was at work to har- 
monise contrasts, to deepen expression — a spirit which, 
in its dealing with the elements of ancient life, was guided 
by a wonderful tact of selection, exclusion, juxtaposition, 
begetting thereby a unique effect of freshness, a grave 
yet wholesome beauty, because the world of sense, the 
whole outward world was understood to set forth the 
veritable unction and royalty of a certain priesthood and 
kingship of the soul within, among the prerogatives of 
which was a delightful sense of freedom. 

The reader may think perhaps, that Marius, who, 



272 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

Epicurean as he was, had his visionary aptitudes, by an 
inversion of one of Plato's pecuHarities with which he 
was of course famihar, must have descended, by fo7'e- 
sig/it, upon a later age than his own, and anticipated 
Christian poetry and art as they came to be under the 
influence of Saint Francis of Assisi. But if he dreamed 
on one oi^ those nights of the beautiful house of Cecilia, 
its lights and flowers, of Cecilia herself moving among 
the lilies, with an enhanced grace as happens sometimes 
in healthy dreams, it was indeed hardly an anticipation. 
He had lighted, by one of the peculiar intellectual good- 
fortunes of his life, upon a period when, even more than 
in the days of austere ascesis which had preceded and 
were to follow it, the church was true for a moment, 
truer perhaps than she would ever be again, to that 
element of profound serenity in the soul of her Founder, 
which reflected the eternal goodwijl of God to man, " in 
whom," according to the oldest version of the angelic 
message, " He is well-pleased." 

For what Christianity did many centuries afterwards 
in the way of informing an art, a poetry, of graver and 
higher beauty, we may think, than that of Greek art and 
poetry at their best, was in truth conformable to the 
original tendency of its genius. The genuine capacity 
of the catholic church, in this direction, discoverable 
from the first in the New Testament, was also really at 
work, in that earlier "Peace," under the Antonines — 
the minor " Peace of the church," as we might call it, 
in distinction from the final " Peace of the church," 
commonly so called, under Constantine. Saint Francis, 
with his following in the sphere of poetry and of the 
arts — the voice of Dante, the hand of Giotto — giving 
visible feature and colour, and a palpable place among 
men, to the regenerate race, did but re-establish a con- 
tinuity, only suspended in part by those troublous inter- 
vening centuries — the " dark ages," properly thus named 



XXII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 273 

— with the gracious spirit of the primitive church, as 
manifested in that first early springtide of her success. 
The greater " Peace " of Constantine, on the other hand, 
in many ways, does but estabHsh the exclusiveness, the 
puritanism, the ascetic gloom which, in the period 
between Aurelius and the first Christian emperor, 
characterised a church under misunderstanding or 
oppression, driven back, in a world of tasteless contro- 
versy, inwards upon herself 

Already, in the reign of Antoninus Pius, the time 
was gone by when men became Christians under some 
sudden and overpowering impression, and with all the 
disturbing results of such a crisis. At this period the 
larger number, perhaps, had been born Christians, had 
been ever with peaceful hearts in their "Father's house." 
That earlier belief in the speedy coming of judgment 
and of the end of the world, with the consequences it so 
naturally involved in the temper of men's minds, was dying 
out. Every day the contrast between the church and the 
world was becoming less pronounced. And now also, 
as the church rested awhile from opposition, that rapid 
self-development outward from within, proper to times of 
peace, was in progress. Antoninus Pius, it might seem, 
more truly even than Marcus Aurelius himself, was of that 
group of pagan saints for whom Dante, like Augustine, has 
provided in his scheme of the house with many mansions. 
A sincere old Roman piety had urged his fortunately 
constituted nature to no mistakes, no offences against 
humanity. And of his entire freedom from guile one 
reward had been this singular happiness, that under his 
rule there was no shedding of Christian blood. To him 
belonged that half-humorous placidity of soul, of a kind 
illustrated later very effectively by Montaigne, which, 
starting with an instinct of mere fairness towards human 
nature and the world, seems at last actually to qualify 
its possessor to be almost the friend of the people of 



274 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

Christ. Amiable, in its own nature, and full of a reason- 
able gaiety, Christianity has often had its advantage 
of characters such as that. The geniality of Antoninus 
Pius, like the geniality of the earth itself, had permitted 
the church, as being in truth no alien from that old 
mother earth, to expand and thrive for a season as by 
natural process. And that charmed period under the 
Antonines, extending to the later years of the reign of 
Aurelius (beautiful, brief, chapter of ecclesiastical his- 
tory !), contains, as one of its motives of interest, the 
earliest development of Christian ritual under the pre- 
sidence of the church of Rome. 

Again as in one of those mystical, quaint visions of 
the Shepherd of Herjfias, " the aged woman was become 
by degrees more and more youthful. And in the third 
vision she was quite young, and radiant with beauty : 
only her hair was that of an aged woman. And at the 
last she was joyous, and seated upon a throne — seated 
upon a throne, because her position is a strong one." 
The subterranean worship of the church belonged pro- 
perly to those years of her early history in which it was 
illegal for her to worship at all. But, hiding herself for 
awhile as conflict grew violent, she resumed, when there 
was felt to be no more than ordinary risk her natural 
freedom. And the kind of outward prosperity she was 
enjoying in those moments of her first " Peace," her 
modes of worship now blossoming freely above-ground, 
was re-inforced by the decision at this point of a crisis 
in her internal history. 

In the history of the church, as throughout the moral 
history of mankind, there are two distinct ideals, either 
of which it is possible to maintain — -two conceptions, 
under one or the other of which we may represent to 
ourselves men's efforts towards a better life — correspond- 
ing to those two contrasted aspects, noted above, as dis- 
cernible in the picture afforded by the New Testament 



XXII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 275 

itself of the character of Christ. The ideal of asceticism 
represents moral eifort as essentially a sacrifice, the sacri- 
fice of one part of human nature to another, that it may 
live the more completely in what survives of it; while 
the ideal of culture represents it as a harmonious 
development of all the parts of human nature, in just 
proportion to each other. It was to the latter order of 
ideas that the church, and especially the church of Rome 
in the age of the Antonines, freely lent herself. In that 
earlier " Peace " she had set up for herself the ideal of 
spiritual development, under the guidance of an instinct 
by which, in those serene moments, she was absolutely 
true to the peaceful soul of her Founder. " Goodwill 
to men," she said, "in whom God Himself is well- 
pleased ! " For a little while, at least, there was no 
forced opposition between the soul and the body, the 
world and the spirit, and the grace of graciousness itself 
was pre-eminently with the people of Christ. Tact, good 
sense, ever the note of a true orthodoxy, the merciful 
compromises of the church, indicative of her imperial 
vocation in regard to all the varieties of human kind, 
with a universality of which the old Roman pastorship 
she was superseding is but a prototype, was already 
become conspicuous, in spite of a discredited, irritating, 
vindictive society, all around her. 

Against that divine urbanity and moderation the old 
error of Montanus we read of dimly, was a fanatical 
revolt — sour, falsely anti-mundane, ever with an air of 
ascetic affectation, and a bigoted distaste in particular 
for all the peculiar graces of womanhood. By it the 
desire to please was understood to come of the author 
of evil. In this interval of quietness, it was perhaps 
inevitable, by the law of reaction, that some such extrava- 
gances of the religious temper should arise. But again 
the church of Rome, now becoming every day more and 
more completely the capital of the Christian world, 



276 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

checked the nascent Montanism, or puritanism of the 
moment, vindicating for all Christian people a cheerful 
Hberty of heart, against many a narrow group of sectaries, 
all alike, in their different ways, accusers of the genial 
creation of God. With her full, fresh faith in the 
Evangele — in a veritable regeneration of the earth and 
the body, in the dignity of man's entire personal being — 
for a season, at least, at that critical period in the 
development of Christianity, she was for reason, for 
common sense, for fairness to human nature, and, gener- 
ally, for what may be called the naturalness of Christi- 
anity. — As also for its comely order : she would be 
"brought to her king in raiment of needlework." It 
was by the bishops of Rome, diligently transforming 
themselves, in the true catholic sense, into universal 
pastors, that the path of what we must call humanism 
was thus defined. 

And then, in this hour of expansion, as if now at last 
the catholic church might venture to show her outward 
lineaments as they really were, worship — " the beauty of 
holiness," nay ! the elegance of sanctity — was developed, 
with a bold and confident gladness, the like of which 
has hardly been the ideal of worship in any later age. 
The tables in fact were turned : the prize of a cheerful 
temper on a candid survey of life was no longer with the 
pagan world. The aesthetic charm of the catholic 
church, her evocative power over all that is eloquent and 
expressive in the better mind of man, her outward comeli- 
ness, her dignifying convictions about human nature : — 
all this, as abundantly realised centuries later by Dante 
and Giotto, by the great medieval church-builders, by 
the great ritualists like Saint Gregory, and the masters 
of sacred music in the middle age — we may see already, 
in dim anticipation, in those charmed moments towards 
the end of the second century. Dissipated or turned 
aside, partly through the fatal mistake of Marcus Aurelius 



XXII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 277 

himself, for a brief space of time we may discern that 
influence clearly predominant there. What might seem 
harsh as dogma was already justifying itself as worship ] 
according to the sound rule : Lex orandi^ lex credetidi — 
Our Creeds are but the brief abstract of our prayer and 
song. 

The wonderful liturgical spirit of the church, her 
wholly unparalleled genius for worship, being thus awake, 
she was rapidly re-organising both pagan and Jewish 
elements of ritual, for the expanding therein of her own 
new heart of devotion. Like the institutions of monasti- 
cism, like the Gothic style of architecture, the ritual 
system of the church, as we see it in historic retrospect, 
ranks as one of the great, conjoint, and (so to term them) 
necessary^ products of human mind. Destined for ages 
to come, to direct with so deep a fascination men's 
religious instincts, it was then already recognisable as a 
new and precious fact in the sum of things. What has 
been on the whole the method of the church, as "a 
power of sweetness and patience," in dealing with matters 
like pagan art, pagan literature was even then manifest ; 
and has the character of the moderation, the divine 
moderation of Christ himself. It was only among the 
ignorant, indeed, only in the "villages," that Christianity, 
even in conscious triumph over paganism, was really 
betrayed into iconoclasm. In the final "Peace" of 
the Church under Constantine, while there was plenty 
of destructive fanaticism in the country, the revolution 
was accomplished in the larger towns, in a manner more 
orderly and discreet — in the Roman manner. The 
faithful were bent less on the destruction of the old 
pagan temples than on their conversion to a new and 
higher use ; and, with much beautiful furniture ready to 
hand, they became Christian sanctuaries. 

Already, in accordance with such maturer wisdom, 
the church of the " Minor Peace " had adopted many oi 



278 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap 

the graces of pagan feeling and pagan custom ; as being 
indeed a living creature, taking up, transforming, accom- 
modating still more closely to the human heart what of 
right belonged to it. In this way an obscure syna- 
gogue was expanded into the catholic church. Gather- 
ing, from a richer and more varied field of sound than 
had remained for him, those old Roman harmonies, 
some notes of which Gregory the Great, centuries later, 
and after generations of interrupted development, formed 
into the Gregorian music, she was already, as we have 
heard, the house of song — of a wonderful new music and 
poesy. As if in anticipation of the sixteenth century, 
the church was becoming "humanistic," in an earlier, 
and unimpeachable Renaissance. Singing there had 
been in abundance from the first ; though often it dared 
only be "of the heart." And it burst forth, when it 
might, into the beginnings of a true ecclesiastical music \ 
the Jewish psalter, inherited from the synagogue, turning 
now, gradually, from Greek into Latin — broken Latin, 
into Italian, as the ritual use of the rich, fresh, expressive 
vernacular superseded the earlier authorised language of 
the Church. Through certain surviving remnants of 
Greek in the later Latin liturgies, we may still discern 
a highly interesting intermediate phase of ritual develop- 
ment, when the Greek and the Latin were in combina- 
tion ; the poor, surely ! — the poor and the children of 
that liberal Roman church — responding already in their 
own "vulgar tongue," to an office said in the original, 
liturgical Greek. That hymn sung in the early morning, 
of which Pliny had heard, was kindling into the service 
of the Mass. 

The Mass, indeed, would appear to have been said 
continuously from the Apostolic age. Its details, as one 
by one they become visible in later history, have already 
the character of what is ancient and venerable. " We 
are very old, and ye are young ! " they seem to protest, 



XXII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 279 

to those who fail to understand them. Ritual, in fact, 
like all other elements of religion, must grow and cannot 
be made — grow by the same law of development which 
prevails everywhere else, in the moral as in the physical 
world. As regards this special phase of the religious 
life, however, such development seems to have been 
unusually rapid in the subterranean age which preceded 
Constantine ; and in the very first days of the final 
triumph of the church the Mass emerges to general view 
already substantially complete. " Wisdom " was dealing, 
as with the dust of creeds and philosophies, so also with 
the dust of outworn religious usage, like the very spirit 
of life itself, organising soul and body out of the lime 
and clay of the earth. In a generous eclecticism, within 
the bounds of her hberty, and as by some providential 
power within her, she gathers and serviceably adopts, as 
in other matters so in ritual, one thing here, another 
there, from various sources — Gnostic, Jewish, Pagan — 
to adorn and beautify the greatest act of worship the 
world has seen. It was thus the liturgy of the church 
came to be — full of consolations for the human soul, 
and destined, surely ! one day, under the sanction of so 
many ages of human experience, to take exclusive posses 
sion of the religious consciousness. 

TANTUM ERGO SACRAMENTUM 
VENEREMUR CERNUI : 
ET ANTIQUUM DOCUMENTUM 
NOVO CEDAT RITUI. 



CHAPTER XXIIl 



DIVINE SERVICE 



'* Wisdom hath builded herself a house : she hath mingled her wine s " 

she hath also prepared for herself a table." 

The more highly favoured ages of imaginative art present 
instances of the summing up of an entire world of com- 
plex associations under some single form, like the Zeus 
of Olympia, or the series of frescoes which commemorate 
The Acts of Saint Francis^ at Assisi, or like the play of 
Hamlet or Faust. It was not in an image, or series of 
images, yet still in a sort of dramatic action, and with 
the unity of a single appeal to eye and ear, that Marius 
about this time found all his new impressions set forth, 
regarding what he had already recognised, intellectually, 
as for him at least the most beautiful thing in the world. 
To understand the influence upon him of what follows 
the reader must remember that it was an experience which 
came amid a deep sense of vacuity in life. The fairest 
products of the earth seemed to be dropping to pieces, 
as if in men's very hands, around him. How real was 
their sorrow, and his ! " His observation of hfe " had 
come to be like the constant telling of a sorrowful rosary, 
day after day ; till, as if taking infection from the cloudy 
sorrow of the mind, the eye also, the very senses, were 
grown faint and sick. And now it happened as with the 



CHAP. XXIII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 281 

actual morning on which he found himself a spectator of 
this new thing. The long winter had been a season of 
unvarying sullenness. At last, on this day he awoke 
with a sharp flash of lightning in the earliest twilight : 
in a little while the heavy rain had filtered the air : the 
clear light was abroad ; and, as though the spring had 
set in with a sudden leap in the heart of things, the 
whole scene around him lay like some untarnished picture 
beneath a sky of delicate blue. Under the spell of his 
late depression, Marius had suddenly determined to leave 
Rome for a while. But desiring first to advertise Cor- 
nelius of his movements, and failing to find him in his 
lodgings, he had ventured, still early in the day, to seek 
him in the Cecilian villa. Passing through its silent and 
empty court-yard he loitered for a moment, to admire. 
Under the clear but immature light of winter morning 
after a storm, all the details of form and colour in the 
old marbles were distinctly visible, and with a kind of 
severity or sadness — so it struck him — amid their beauty: 
in them, and in all other details of the scene — the 
cypresses, the bunches of pale daffodils in the grass, the 
curves of the purple hills of Tusculum, with the drifts of 
virgin snow still lying in their hollows. 

The little open door, through which he passed from 
the court-yard, admitted him into what was plainly the 
vast Larariu7?i^ or domestic sanctuary, of the Cecilian 
family, transformed in many particulars, but still richly 
decorated, and retaining much of its ancient furniture 
in metal-work and costly stone. The peculiar half-light 
of dawn seemed to be lingering beyond its hour upon 
the solemn marble walls ; and here, though at that 
moment in absolute silence, a great company of people 
was assembled. In that brief period of peace, during 
which the church emerged for awhile from her jealously- 
guarded subterranean life, the rigour of an earlier rule of 
exclusion had been relaxed. And so it came to pass 



282 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

f.hat, on this morning Marius saw for the first time the 
wonderful spectacle — wonderful, especially, in its eviden- 
tial power over himself, over his own thoughts — of those 
who believe.. 

There were noticeable, among those present, great 
varieties of rank, of age, of personal type. The Roman 
mgenuus, with the white toga and gold ring, stood side 
by side with his slave ; and the air of the whole com- 
pany was, above all, a grave one, an air of recollection. 
Coming thus unexpectedly upon this large assembly, so 
entirely united, in a silence so profound, for purposes 
unknown to him, Marius felt for a moment as if he had 
stumbled by chance upon some great conspiracy. Yet 
that could scarcely be, for the people here collected might 
have figured as the earliest handsel, or pattern, of a new 
world, from the very face of which discontent had passed 
away. Corresponding to the variety of human type there 
present, was the various expression of every form of 
human sorrow assuaged. What desire, what fulfilment 
of desire, had wrought so pathetically on the features of 
these ranks of aged men and women of humble condi- 
tion ? Those young men, bent down so discreetly on 
the details of their sacred service, had faced life and 
were glad, by some science, or light of knowledge they 
had, to which there had certainly been no parallel in the 
older world. Was some credible message from beyond 
" the flaming rampart of the world " — a message of hope, 
regarding the place of men's souls and their interest in 
the sum of things — already moulding anew their very 
bodies, and looks, and voices, now and here ? At least, 
there was a cleansing and kindling flame at work in them, 
which seemed to make everything else Marius had ever 
known look comparatively vulgar and mean. There 
were the children, above all — troops of children — re- 
minding him of those pathetic children's graves, like 
cradles or garden-beds, he had noticed in his first visit 



3CXIII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 283 

to these places ; and they more than satisfied the odd 
curiosity he had then conceived about them, wondering 
in what quaintly expressive forms they might come 
forth into the daylight, if awakened from sleep. Chil- 
dren of the Catacombs, some but "a span long," with 
features not so much beautiful as heroic (that world of 
new, refining sentiment having set its seal even on child- 
hood), they retained certainly no stain or trace of 
anything subterranean this morning, in the alacrity of 
their worship — as ready as if they had been at play — 
stretching forth their hands, crying, chanting in a resonant 
voice, and with boldly upturned faces, Christe Eleison ! 
For the silence — silence, amid those lights of early 
morning to which Marius had always been constitution- 
ally impressible, as having in them a certain reproachful 
austerity — was broken suddenly by resounding cries of 
Kyrie Eleison ! Christe Eleison I repeated alternately, 
again and again, until the bishop, rising from his chair, 
made sign that this prayer should cease. But the voices 
burst out once more presently, in richer and more varied 
melody, though still of an antiphonal character ; the 
men, the women and children, the deacons, the people, 
answering one another, somewhat after the manner of a 
Greek chorus. But again with what a novelty of poetic 
accent ; what a genuine expansion of heart ; what pro- 
found intimations for the intellect, as the meaning of 
the words grew upon him ! Cufn grandi affectu et coni- 
punctione dicatur — says an ancient eucharistic order; 
and certainly, the mystic tone of this praying and 
singing was one with the expression of deliverance, of 
grateful assurance and sincerity, upon the faces of those 
assembled. As if some searching correction, a regenera- 
tion of the body by the spirit, had begun, and was 
already gone a great way, the countenances of men, 
women, and children alike had a brightness on them 
which he could fancy reflected upon himself — an 



284 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

amenity, a mystic amiability and unction, which found 
its way most readily of all to the hearts of children 
themselves. The religious poetry of those Hebrew 
psalms — Benedixisii Do?nine terram tuam : Dixit Do mi- 
nus Domino meo^ sede a dextris meis — was certainly in 
marvellous accord with the lyrical instinct of his own 
character. Those august hymns, he thought, must 
thereafter ever remain by him as among the well-tested 
powers in things to soothe and fortify the soul. One 
could never grow tired of them ! 

In the old pagan worship there had been little to 
call the understanding into play. Here, on the other 
hand, the utterance, the eloquence, the music of worship 
conveyed, as Marius readily understood, a fact or series 
of facts, for intellectual reception. That became evident, 
more especially, in those lessons, or sacred readings, 
which, like the singing, in broken vernacular Latin, 
occurred at certain intervals, amid the silence of the 
assembly. There were readings, again with bursts of 
chanted invocation between for fuller light on a difficult 
path, in which many a vagrant voice of human philosophy, 
haunting men's minds from of old, recurred with clearer 
accent than had ever belonged to it before, as if lifted, 
above its first intention, into the harmonies of some 
supreme system of knowledge or doctrine, at length 
complete. And last of all came a narrative which, with 
a thousand tender memories, every one appeared to 
know by heart, displaying, in all the vividness of a picture 
for the eye, the mournful figure of him towards whom 
this whole act of worship still consistently turned — a 
figure which seemed to have absorbed, like some rich 
tincture in his garment, all that was deep-felt and im- 
passioned in the experiences of the past. 

It was the anniversary of his birth as a little child 
they celebrated to-day. Astiterunt reges ferrcE : so the 
Gradual, the "Song of Degrees," proceeded, the young 



XXIII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 



205 



men on the steps of the altar responding in deep, clea^^ 
antiphon or chorus — 

Astiterunt reges terrse — 

Adversus sanctum puerum tuum, Jesum : 

Nunc, Domine, da servis tuis loqui verbum tuum — 

Et signa fieri, per nomen sancti pueri Jesu. 

And the proper action of the rite itself, like a half- 
opened book to be read by the duly initiated mind took 
up those suggestions, and carried them forward into the 
present, as having reference to a power still efficacious, 
still after some mystic sense even now in action among 
the people there assembled. The entire office, indeed, 
•with its interchange of lessons, hymns, prayer, silence, 
was itself like a single piece of highly composite, dramatic 
music; a "song of degrees," rising steadily to a climax. 
Notwithstanding the absence of any central image visible 
to the eye, the entire ceremonial process, like the place 
in which it was enacted, was weighty with symbolic 
significance, seemed to express a single leading motive. 
The mystery, if such in fact it was, centered indeed in 
the actions of one visible person, distinguished among 
the assistants, who stood ranged in semi -circle around 
him, by the extreme fineness of his white vestments, and 
the pointed cap with the golden ornaments upon his head. 
Nor had Marius ever seen the pontifical character, 
as he conceived it — sicut unguentum in captte, descendens 
in Oram vestimenti — so fully realised, as in the expression, 
the manner and voice, of this novel pontiff, as he took 
his seat on the white chair placed for him by the young 
men, and received his long staff into his hand, or moved 
his hands — hands which seemed endowed in very deed 
with some mysterious power — at the Lavabo, or at the 
various benedictions, or to bless certain objects on the 
table before him, chanting in cadence of a grave sweet- 
ness the leading parts of the rite. What profound 



286 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

unction and mysticity ! The solemn character of the 
singing was at its height when he opened his Hps. Like 
some new sort of rhapsodos, it was for the moment as if 
he alone possessed the words of the office, and they 
flowed anew from some permanent source of inspiration 
within him. The table or altar at which he presided, 
below a canopy on delicate spiral columns, was in fact 
the tomb of a youthful " witness," of the family of the 
Cecilii, who had shed his blood not many years before, 
and whose relics were still in this place. It was for his 
sake the bishop put his lips so often to the surface 
before him ; the regretful memory of that death entwin- 
ing itself, though not without certain notes of triumph, 
as a matter of special inward significance, throughout a 
service, which was, before all else, from first to last, a 
commemoration of the dead. 

A sacrifice also, — a sacrifice, it might seem, like the 
most primitive, the most natural and enduringly signifi- 
cant of old pagan sacrifices, of the simplest fruits of the 
earth. And in connexion with this circumstance again, 
as in the actual stones of the building so in the rite 
itself, what Marius observed was not so much new 
matter as a new spirit, moulding, informing, with a new 
intention, many observances not witnessed for the first 
time to-day. Men and women came to the altar suc- 
cessively, in perfect order, and deposited below the 
lattice-work of pierced white marble, their baskets of 
wheat and grapes, incense, oil for the sanctuary lamps ; 
bread and wine especially — pure wheaten bread, the 
pure white wine of the Tusculan vineyards. There was 
here a veritable consecration, hopeful and animating, of 
the earth's gifts, of old dead and dark matter itself, now 
in some way redeemed at last, of all that we can touch 
or see, in the midst of a jaded world that had lost the 
true sense of such things, and in strong contrast to the 
wise emperor's renunciant and impassive attitude towards 



XXIII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 287 

them. Certain portions of that bread and wine were 
taken into the bishop's hands ; and thereafter, with an 
increasing mysticity and effusion the rite proceeded, 
Still in a strain of inspired supplication, the antiphonal 
singing developed, from this point, into a kind of dia- 
logue between the chief minister and the whole assisting 
company — 

SURSUM CORDA ! 

HABEMUS AD DOMINUM. 

GRATIAS AGAMUS DOMINO DEO NOSTRO ! 

It might have been thought the business, the duty or 
service of young men more particularly, as they stood 
there in long ranks, and in severe and simple vesture of 
the purest white — a service in which they would seem 
to be flying for refuge, as with their precious, their 
treacherous and critical youth in their hands, to one — 
Yes ! one like themselves, who yet claimed their worship, 
a worship, above all, in the way of Aurelius, in the way 
of imitation. Adoramus te Christe^ quia per crucem 
tua??i redemisti mundum I — they cry together. So deep 
is the emotion that at moments it seems to Marius as if 
some there present apprehend that prayer prevails, that 
the very object of this pathetic crying himself draws 
near. From the first there had been the sense, an 
increasing assurance, of one coming : — actually with 
them now, according to the oft-repeated affirmation or 
petition, Dominus vobiscum ! Some at least were quite 
sure of it ; and the confidence of this remnant fired the 
hearts, and gave meaning to the bold, ecstatic worship, 
of all the rest about them. 

Prompted especially by the suggestions of that mys- 
terious old Jewish psalmody, so new to him — lesson and 
hymn — and catching therewith a portion of the enthusiasm 
of those beside him, Marius could discern dimly, behind 
the solemn recitation which now followed, at once a 



288 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap 

narrative and a prayer, the most touching image truly 
that had ever come within the scope of his mental oi 
physical gaze. It was the image of a young man giving 
up voluntarily, one by one, for the greatest of ends, the 
greatest gifts ; actually parting with himself, above all, 
with the serenity, the divine serenity, of his own soul ; 
yet from the midst of his desolation crying out upon the 
greatness of his success, as if foreseeing this very 
worship.* As centre of the supposed facts which for 
these people were become so constraining a motive of 
hopefulness, of activity, that image seemed to display 
itself with an overwhelming claim on human gratitude. 
What Saint Lewis of France discerned, and found so 
irresistibly touching, across the dimness of many cen- 
turies, as a painful thing done for love of him by one 
he had never seen, was to them almost as a thing of 
yesterday ; and their hearts were whole with it. It had 
the force, among their interests, of an almost recent event 
in the career of one whom their fathers' fathers might have 
known. From memories so sublime, yet so close at 
hand, had the narrative descended in which these acts 
of worship centered ; though again the names of some 
more recently dead were mingled in it. And it seemed as 
if the very dead were aware ; to be stirring beneath the 
slabs of the sepulchres which lay so near, that they 
might associate themselves to this enthusiasm — to this 
exalted worship of Jesus. 

One by one, at last, the faithful approach to receive 
from the chief minister morsels of the great, white, 
wheaten cake, he had taken into his hands — Perducat 
vos ad vitam csternam ! he prays, half-silently, as they 
depart again, after discreet embraces. The Eucharist of 
those early days was, even more entirely than at any 
later or happier time, an act of thanksgiving ; and 
while the remnants of the feast are borne away for the 

* Psalm xxii. 22-31. 



JCXiii MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 289 

reception of the sick, the sustained gladness of the rite 
reaches its highest point in the singing of a hymn : a 
hymn hke the spontaneous product of two opposed 
mihtant companies, contending accordantly together, 
heightening, accumulating, their witness, provoking one 
another's worship, in a kind of sacred rivalry. 

Ite ! Missa est I — cried the young deacons: and 
Marius departed from that strange scene along with the 
rest. What was it ? — Was it this made the way of Cor- 
nelius so pleasant through the world? As for Marius 
himself, — the natural soul of worship in him had at last 
been satisfied as never before. He felt, as he left that 
place, that he must hereafter experience often a longing 
memory, a kind of thirst, for all this, over again. And 
it seemed moreover to define what he must require of 
the powers, whatsoever they might be, that had broughi 
him into the world at all, to make him not unhappy 
in it 



CHAPTER XXIV 

A CONVERSATION NOT IMAGINARY 

In cheerfulness is the success of our studies, says Pliny 
— studia hila7'itate provefiiunt. It was still the habit of 
Marius, encouraged by his experience that sleep is not 
only a sedative but the best of stimulants, to seize the 
morning hours for creation, making profit when he 
might of the wholesome serenity which followed a 
dreamless night. " The morning for creation," he would 
say; "the afternoon for the perfecting labour of the 
file ; the evening for reception — the reception of matter 
from without one, of other men's words and thoughts — 
matter for our own dreams, or the merely mechanic 
exercise of the brain, brooding thereon silently, in its dark 
chambers." To leave home early in the day was there- 
fore a rare thing for him. He was induced so to do on 
the occasion of a visit to Rome of the famous writer 
Lucian, whom he had been bidden to meet. The break- 
fast over, he walked away with the learned guest, having 
offered to be his guide to the lecture-room of a well- 
known Greek rhetorician and expositor of the Stoic 
philosophy, a teacher then much in fashion among the 
studious youth of Rome. On reaching the place, how- 
ever, they found the doors closed, with a slip of writing 
attached, which proclaimed " a holiday " ; and the 
Tnorning being a fine one, they walked further, along the 



CHAP. XXIV MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 291 

Appian Way. Mortality, with which the Queen of Ways 
— in reaHty the favourite cemetery of Rome — was so 
closely crowded, in every imaginable form of sepulchre, 
from the tiniest baby-house, to the massive monument 
out of which the Middle Age would adapt a fortress-tower, 
might seem, on a morning like this, to be "smiling 
through tears." The flower-stalls just beyond the city 
gates presented to view an array of posies and garlands, 
fresh enough for a wedding. At one and another ol 
them groups of persons, gravely clad, were making their 
bargains before starting for some perhaps distant spot on 
the highway, to keep a dies rosatmiis^ this being the time 
of roses^ at the grave of a deceased relation. Here and 
there, a funeral procession was slowly on its way, in 
weird contrast to the gaiety of the hour. 

The two companions, of course, read the epitaphs 
as they strolled along. In one, reminding them of 
the poet's — Si lac7-im(z prosunt, visis te ostende videri I — 
a woman prayed that her lost husband might visit her 
dreams. Their characteristic note, indeed, was an im- 
ploring cry, still to be sought after by the living. " While 
I live,''such was the promise of a lover to his dead mistress, 
"you will receive this homage: after my death, — who 
can tell ? " — post mortem nescio. " If ghosts, my sons, 
do feel anything after death, my sorrow will be lessened 
by your frequent coming to me here!" — "This is a 
privileged tomb ; to my family and descendants has been 
conceded the right of visiting this place as often as they 
please." — "This is an eternal habitation; here lie I; 
here I shall lie for ever." — " Reader ! if you doubt that 
the soul survives, make your oblation and a prayer for 
me ; and you shall understand ! " 

The elder of the two readers, certainly, was little 
affected by those pathetic suggestions. It was long ago 
that after visiting the banks of the Padus, where he had 
sought in vain for the poplars (sisters of Phaethon ere- 



2Q2 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

while) whose tears became amber, he had once for all 
arranged for himself a view of the world exclusive of all 
reference to what might lie beyond its " flaming barriers." 
And at the age of sixty he had no misgivings. His 
elegant and self-complacent but far from unamiable 
scepticism, long since brought to perfection, never failed 
him. It surrounded him, as some are surrounded by a 
magic ring of fine aristocratic manners, with " a rampart," 
through which he himself never broke, nor permitted any 
thing or person to break upon him. Gay, animated, 
content w^ith his old age as it was, the aged student still 
took a lively interest in studious youth. — Could Marius 
inform him of any such, now known to him in Rome ? 
What did the young men learn, just then ? and how ? 

In answer, Marius became fluent concerning the 
promise of one young student, the son, as it presently 
appeared, of parents of whom Lucian himself knew 
something : and soon afterwards the lad was seen 
coming along briskly — a lad with gait and figure well 
enough expressive of the sane mind in the healthy body, 
though a little slim and worn of feature, and with a pair 
of eyes expressly designed, it might seem, for fine glanc- 
ings at the stars. At the sight of Marius he paused 
suddenly, and with a modest blush on recognising his 
companion, who straightway took with the youth, so 
prettily enthusiastic, the freedom of an old friend. 

In a few moments the three were seated together, 
immediately above the fragrant borders of a rose-farm, 
on the marble bench of one of the exhedrce for the use 
of foot-passengers at the roadside, from which they could 
overlook the grand, earnest prospect of the Canipagna, 
and enjoy the air. Fancying that the lad's plainly 
written enthusiasm had induced in the elder speaker 
somewhat more fervour than was usual with him, Marius 
listened to the conversation which follows. — 

" Ah ! Hermotimus ! Hurryinsf to lecture I — if T mav 



xxrv MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 293 

judge by your pace, and that volume in your hand. 
You were thinking hard as you came along, moving your 
lips and waving your arms. Some fine speech you were 
pondering, some knotty question, some viewy doctrine — 
not to be idle for a moment, to be making progress in 
philosophy, even on your way to the schools. To-day, 
however, you need go no further. We read a notice at 
the schools that there would be no lecture. Stay there- 
fore, and talk awhile with us. 

— With pleasure, Lucian. — Yes ! I was ruminating 
yesterday's conference. One must not lose a moment. 
Life is short and art is long 1 And it was of the art of 
medicine, that was first said — a thing so much easier 
than divine philosophy, to which one can hardly attain 
in a lifetime, unless one be ever wakeful, ever on the 
watch. And here the hazard is no little one : — By the 
attainment of a true philosophy to attain happiness ; or, 
having missed both, to perish, as one of the vulgar herd. 

— The prize is a great one, Hermotimus ! and you 
must needs be near it, after these months of toil, and 
with that scholarly pallor of yours. Unless, indeed, you 
have already laid hold upon it, and kept us in the dark. 

— How could that be, Lucian ? Happiness, as 
Hesiod says, abides very far hence ; and the way to 
it is long and steep and rough. I see myself still at 
the beginning of my journey ; still but at the mountain's 
foot. I am trying with all my might to get forward. 
What I need is a hand, stretched out to help me. 

— And is not the master sufficient for that ? Could 
he not, like Zeus in Homer, let down to you, from that 
high place, a golden cord, to draw you up thither, 
to himself and to that Happiness, to which he ascended 
so long ago ? 

— The very point, Lucian ! Had it depended on 
him 1 should long ago have been caught up. 'Tis I, am 
wanting. 



294 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

— Well ! keep your eye fixed on the journey's end, 
and that happiness there above, with confidence in his 
goodwill. 

— Ah ! there are many who start cheerfiilly on the 
journey and proceed a certain distance, but lose heart 
when they light on the obstacles of the way. Only, 
those who endure to the end do come to the mountain's 
top, and thereafter live in Happiness : — live a wonderful 
manner of life, seeing all other people from that great 
height no bigger than tiny ants. 

— What little fellows you make of us — less than the 
pygmies — down in the dust here. Well ! we, ' the 
vulgar herd,' as we creep along, will not forget you in 
our prayers, when you are seated up there above the 
clouds, whither you have been so long hastening. But 
tell me, Hermotimus ! — when do you expect to arrive 
there ? 

— Ah ! that I know not. In twenty years, perhaps, 
I shall be really on the summit. — A great while ! you 
think. But then, again, the prize I contend for is a 
great one. 

— Perhaps ! But as to those twenty years — that you 
will live so long. Has the master assured you of that ? 
Is he a prophet as well as a philosopher? For I 
suppose you would not endure all this, upon a mere 
chance — toiling day and night, though it might happen 
that just ere the last step. Destiny seized you by the 
foot and plucked you thence, with your hope still 
unfulfilled. 

— Hence, with these ill-omened words, Lucian ! 
Were I to survive but for a day, I should be happy, 
having once attained wisdom. 

— How ? — Satisfied with a single day, after all those 
labours ? 

— Yes ! one blessed moment were enough ! 

— But again, as you have never been, how know you 



icxiv. MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 295 

that happiness is to be had up there, at all — the happi- 
ness that is to make all this worth while ? 

— I believe what the master tells me. Of a certainty 
he knows, being now far above all others. 

— And what was it he told you about it ? Is it 
riches, or glory, or some indescribable pleasure ? 

— Hush ! my friend ! All those are nothing in com- 
parison of the life there. 

— What, then, shall those who come to the end of 
this discipline — what excellent thing shall they receive, 
if not these ? 

— Wisdom, the absolute goodness and the absolute 
beauty, with the sure and certain knowledge of all things 
— how they are. Riches and glory and pleasure — 
whatsoever belongs to the body — they have cast from 
them : stripped bare of all that, they mount up, even as 
Hercules, consumed in the fire, became a god. He too 
cast aside all that he had of his earthly mother, and 
bearing with him the divine element, pure and undefiled, 
winged his way to heaven from the discerning flame. 
Even so do they, detached from all that others prize, by 
the burning fire of a true philosophy, ascend to the 
highest degree of happiness. 

— Strange ! And do they never come down again 
from the heights to help those whom they left below ? 
Must they, when they be once come thither, there remain 
for ever, laughing, as you say, at what other men prize ? 

— More than that ! They whose initiation is entire 
are subject no longer to anger, fear, desire, regret. 
Nay ! They scarcely feel at all. 

— Well ! as you have leisure to-day, why not tell an 
old friend in what way you first started on your philo- 
sophic journey ? For, if I might, I should like to join 
company with you from this very day. 

— If you be really willing, Lucian ! you will learn in 
no long time your advantage over all other people. They 



296 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

will seem but as children, so far above them will be your 
thoughts. 

— Well ! Be you my guide ! It is but fair. But 
tell me — Do you allow learners to contradict, if anything 
is said which they don't think right ? 

— No, indeed ! Still, if you wish, oppose your 
questions. In that way you will learn more easily. 

— Let me know, then — Is there one only way which 
leads to a true philosophy — your own way — the way of 
the Stoics : or is it true, as I have heard, that there are 
many ways of approaching it ? 

— Yes ! Many ways ! There are the Stoics, and the 
Peripatetics, and those who call themselves after Plato : 
there are the enthusiasts for Diogenes, and Antisthenes, 
and the followers of Pythagoras, besides others. 

— It was true, then. But again, is what they say 
the same or different ? 

— Very different. 

— Yet the truth, I conceive, would be one and the 
same, from all of them. Answer me then — In what, or 
in whom, did you confide when you first betook yourself 
to philosophy, and seeing so many doors open to you, 
passed them all by and went in to the Stoics, as if there 
alone lay the way of truth ? What token had you ? 
Forget, please, all you are to-day — half-way, or more, on 
the philosophic journey : answer me as you would have 
done then, a mere outsider as I am now. 

— Willingly ! It was there the great majority went ! 
'Twas by that I judged it to be the better way. 

— A majority how much greater than the Epicureans, 
the Platonists, the Peripatetics ? You, doubtless, counted 
them respectively, as with the votes in a scrutiny. 

— No ! But this was not my only motive. I heard 
it said by every one that the Epicureans were soft and 
voluptuous, the Peripatetics avaricious and quarrelsome, 
and Plato's followers puffed up with pride. But of the 



XXIV MARIUS THP: EPICUREAN 297 

Stoics, not a few pronounced that they were true men, 
that they knew everything, that theirs was the royal road, 
the one road, to wealth, to wisdom, to all that can be 
desired. 

— Of course those who said this were not themselves 
Stoics : you would not have believed them — still less 
their opponents. They were the vulgar, therefore. 

—True ! But you must know that I did not trust 
to others exclusively. I trusted also to myself — to what 
I saw. I saw the Stoics going through the world after 
a seemly manner, neatly clad, never in excess, always 
collected, ever faithful to the mean which all pronounce 
' golden.' 

— You are trying an experiment on me. You would 
fain see how far you can mislead me as to your real 
ground. The kind of probation you describe is applic- 
able, indeed, to works of art, which are rightly judged 
by their appearance to the eye. There is something in 
the comely form, the graceful drapery, which tells surely 
of the hand of Pheidias or Alcamenes. But if philo- 
sophy is to be judged by outward appearances, what 
would become of the blind man, for instance, unable to 
observe the attire and gait of your friends the Stoics ? 

— It was not of the blind I was thinking. 

— Yet there must needs be some common criterion in 
a matter so important to all. Put the blind, if you will, 
beyond the privileges of philosophy ; though they perhaps 
need that inward vision more than all others. But can 
those who are not blind, be they as keen-sighted as you 
will, collect a single fact of mind from a man's attire, 
from anything outward ? — Understand me ! You 
attached yourself to these men — did you not ? — because 
of a certain love you had for the mind in them, the 
thoughts they possessed desiring the mind in you to be 
improved thereby ? 

— Assuredly ! 



298 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap 

—How, then, did you find it possible, by the sort ol 
signs you just now spoke of, to distinguish the true 
philosopher from the . false ? Matters of that kind are 
not wont so to reveal themselves. They are but hidden 
mysteries, hardly to be guessed at through the words and 
acts which may in some sort be conformable to them. 
You, however, it would seem, can look straight into the 
heart in men's bosoms, and acquaint yourself with what 
really passes there. 

— You are making sport of me, Lucian ! In truth. 
it was with God's help I made my choice, and I don't 
repent it. 

— And still you refuse to tell me, to save me from 
perishing in that 'vulgar herd.' 

— Because nothing I can tell you would satisfy you. 

— You are mistaken, my friend ! But since you 
deliberately conceal the thing, grudging me, as I suppose, 
that true philosophy which would make me equal to you, 
I will try, if it may be, to find out for myself the exact 
criterion in these matters — how to make a perfectly safe 
choice. And, do you listen. 

— I will ; there may be something worth knowing in 
what you will say. 

— Well ! — only don't laugh if I seem a little fumbling 
in my efforts. The fault is yours, in refusing to share 
your lights with me. Let Philosophy, then, be like a 
city — a city whose citizens within it are a happy people, 
as your master would tell you, having lately come thence, 
as we suppose. All the virtues are theirs, and they are 
little less than gods. Those acts of violence which 
happen among us are not to be seen in their streets. 
They live together in one mind, very seemly ; the things 
which beyond everything else cause men to contend against 
each other, having no place among them. Gold and 
silver, pleasure, vainglory, they have long since banished, 
as being unprofitable to the commonwealth ; and their 



i 



XXIV MARIUS THE EriCUREAN 299 

life is an unbroken calm, in liberty, equality, an equal 
happiness. 

— And is it not reasonable that all men should desire 
to be of a city such as that, and take no account of the 
length and difficulty of the way thither, so only they may 
one day become its freemen ? 

— It might well be the business of life : — leaving all 
else, forgetting one's native country here, unmoved by 
the tears, the restraining hands, of parents or children, if 
one had them — only bidding them follow the same road ; 
and if they would not or could not, shaking them off, 
leaving one's very garment in their hands if they took 
hold on us, to start off straightway for that happy place ! 
For there is no fear, I suppose, of being shut out if one 
came thither naked. I remember, indeed, long ago an 
aged man related to me how things passed there, offer- 
ing himself to be my leader, and enrol me on my arrival 
in the number of the citizens. I was but fifteen — 
certainly very foolish : and it may be that I was then 
actually within the suburbs, or at the very gates, of the 
city. Well, this aged man told me, among other things, 
that all the citizens were wayfarers from afar. Among 
them were barbarians and slaves, poor men — aye ! and 
cripples — all indeed who truly desired that citizenship. 
For the only legal conditions of enrolment were — not 
wealth, nor bodily beauty, nor noble ancestry — things not 
named among them — but intelligence, and the desire for 
moral beauty, and earnest labour. The last comer, thus 
qualified, was made equal to the rest : master and slave, 
patrician, plebeian, were words they had not — in that 
blissful place. And believe me, if that blissful, that 
beautiful place, were set on a hill visible to all the world, 
I should long ago have journeyed thither. But, as you 
say, it is far off: and one must needs find out for oneself 
the road to it, and the best possible guide. And I find 
a multitude of guides, who press on me their services, and 



300 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

protest, all alike, that they have themselves come thence. 
Only, the roads they propose are many, and towards 
adverse quarters. And one of them is steep and stony, 
and through the beating sun ; and the other is through 
green meadows, and under grateful shade, and by many a 
fountain of water. But howsoever the road may be, at 
each one of them stands a credible guide ; he puts out 
his hand and would have you come his way. All other 
ways are wrong, all other guides false. Hence my 
difficulty ! — The number and variety of the ways ! For 
you know. There is but one road that leads to Corinth. 

— Well ! If you go the whole round, you will find 
no better guides than those. If you wish to get to 
Corinth, you will follow the traces of Zeno and Chry- 
sippus. It is impossible otherwise. 

— Yes ! The old, familiar language ! Were one of 
Plato's fellow -pilgrims here, or a follower of Epicurus 
— or fifty others — each would tell me that I should 
never get to Corinth except in his company. One must 
therefore credit all alike, which would be absurd ; or, 
what is far safer, distrust all alike, until one has dis- 
covered the truth. Suppose now, that, being as I am, 
ignorant which of all philosophers is really in possession 
of truth, I choose your sect, relying on yourself — my 
friend, indeed, yet still acquainted only with the way of 
the Stoics ; and that then some divine power brought 
Plato, and Aristotle, and Pythagoras, and the others, 
back to life again. Well ! They would come round 
about me, and put me on my trial for my presumption, 
and say : — ' In whom was it you confided when you 
preferred Zeno and Chrysippus to me ? — and me ? — 
masters of far more venerable age than those, who are 
but of yesterday; and though you have never held any 
discussion with us, nor made trial of our doctrine ? It 
is not thus that the law would have judges do — listen to 
one party and refuse to let the other speak for himself 



XXIV MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 301 

If judges act thus, there may be an appeal to another 
tribunal.' What should I answer? Would it be enough 
to say : — 'I trusted my friend Hermotimus ? ' — ' We 
know not Hermotimus, nor he us,' they would tell me ; 
adding, with a smile, * your friend thinks he may believe 
all our adversaries say of us whether in ignorance or in 
malice. Yet if he were umpire in the games, and if he 
happened to see one of our wrestlers, by way of a 
preliminary exercise, knock to pieces an antagonist of 
mere empty air, he would not thereupon pronounce him 
a victor. Well ! don't let your friend Hermotimus sup- 
pose, in like manner, that his teachers have really pre- 
vailed over us in those batdes of theirs, fought with our 
mere shadows. That, again, were to be like children, 
lightly overthrowing their own card-castles ; or like boy- 
archers, who cry out when they hit the target of straw. 
The Persian and Scythian bowmen, as they speed along, 
can pierce a bird on the wing.' 

— Let us leave Plato and the others at rest. It is 
not for me to contend against them. Let us rather 
search out together if the truth of Philosophy be as 
I say. Why summon the athletes, and archers from 
Persia ? 

— Yes ! let them go, if you think them in the way. 
And now do you speak ! You really look as if you had 
something wonderful to deliver. 

— Well then, Lucian ! to me it seems quite possible 
for one who has learned the doctrines of the Stoics only, 
to attain from those a knowledge of the truth, without 
proceeding to inquire into all the various tenets of the 
others. Look at the question in this way. If one told 
you that twice two make four, would it be necessary for 
you to go the whole round of the arithmeticians, to see 
whether any one of them will say that twice two make 
five, or seven ? Would you not see at once that the 
man tells the truth ? 



302 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chav 

— At once. 

— Why then do you find it impossible that one whc 
has fallen in with the Stoics only, in their enunciation of 
what is true, should adhere to them, and seek after no 
others ; assured that four could never be five, even if 
fifty Platos, fifty Aristotles said so ? 

— You are beside the point, Hermotimus ! You are 
likening open questions to principles universally received. 
Have you ever met any one who said that twice two 
make five, or seven ? 

— No ! only a madman would say that. 

— And have you ever met, on the other hand, a Stoic 
and an Epicurean who were agreed upon the beginning 
and the end, the principle and the final cause, of things ? 
Never ! Then your parallel is false. We are inquiring 
to which of the sects philosophic truth belongs, and you 
seize on it by anticipation, and assign it to the Stoics, 
alleging, what is by no means clear, that it is they for 
whom twice two make four. But the Epicureans, or 
the Platonists, might say that it is they, in truth, who 
make two and two equal four, while you make them five 
or seven. Is it not so, when you think virtue the only 
good, and the Epicureans //^^j-z^r^; when you hold all 
things to be material^ while the Platonists admit some- 
thing immatenal ? As I said, you resolve offhand, in 
favour of the Stoics, the very point which needs a 
critical decision. If it is clear beforehand that the 
Stoics alone make two and two equal four, then the 
others must hold their peace. But so long as that is 
the very point of debate, we must listen to all sects alike, 
or be well-assured that we shall seem but partial in our 
judgment. 

— I think, Lucian ! that you do not altogether under- 
stand my meaning. To make it clear, then, let us suppose 
that two men had entered a temple, of Aesculapius, — 
say ! or Bacchus : and that afterwards one of the sacred 



XXIV MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 303 

vessels is found to be missing. And the two men must 
be searched to see which of them has hidden it under 
his garment. For it is certainly in the possession of one 
or the other of them. Well ! if it be found on the first 
there will be no need to search the second ; if it is not 
found on the first, then the other must have it ; and 
again, there will be no need to search him. 

— Yes ! So let it be. 

— And we too, Lucian ! if we have found the holy 
vessel in possession of the Stoics shall no longer have 
need to search other philosophers, having attained that 
we were seeking. Why trouble ourselves further ? 

— No need, if something had indeed been found, and 
you knew it to be that lost thing : if, at the least, you 
could recognise the sacred object when you saw it. But 
truly, as the matter now stands, not two persons only 
have entered the temple, one or the other of whom must 
needs have taken the golden cup, but a whole crowd of 
persons. And then, it is not clear what the lost object 
really is — cup, or flagon, or diadem ; for one of the 
priests avers this, another that ; they are not even in 
agreement as to its material : some will have it to be of 
brass, others of silver, or gold. It thus becomes neces- 
sary to search the garments of all persons who have 
entered the temple, if the lost vessel is to be recovered. 
And if you find a golden cup on the first of them, it will 
still be necessary to proceed in searching the garments 
of the others ; for it is not certain that this cup really 
belonged to the temple. Might there not be many such 
golden vessels ? — No ! we must go on to every one of 
them, placing all that we find in the midst together, and 
then make our guess which of all those things may fairly 
be supposed to be the property of the god. For, again, 
this circumstance adds greatly to our difficulty, that 
without exception every one searched is found to have 
something upon him — cup, or flagon, or diadem, of 



304 MARIUS THE EnCUREAN chai- 

brass, of silver, of gold : and still, all the while, it is 
not ascertained which of all these is the sacred thing. 
And you must still hesitate to pronounce any one of 
them guilty of the sacrilege — those objects may be theii 
own lawful property : one cause of all this obscurity being, 
as I think, that there was no inscription on the lost 
cup, if cup it was. Had the name of the god, or even 
that of the donor, been upon it, at least we should have 
had less trouble, and having detected the inscription 
should have ceased to trouble any one else by our search. 

— I have nothing to reply to that. 

— Hardly anything plausible. So that if we wish to 
find who it is has the sacred vessel, or who will be our 
best guide to Corinth, we must needs proceed to every 
one and examine him with the utmost care, stripping off 
his garment and considering him closely. Scarcely, 
even so, shall we come at the truth. And if we are 
to have a credible adviser regarding this question of 
philosophy — which of all philosophies one ought to 
follow — he alone who is acquainted with the dicta of 
every one of them can be such a guide : all others must 
be inadequate. I would give no credence to them if 
they lacked information as to one only. If somebody 
introduced a fair person and told us he was the fairest 
of all men, we should not believe that, unless we knew 
that he had seen all the people in the world. Fair he 
might be ; but, fairest of all — none could know, unless 
he had seen all. And we too desire, not a fair one, but 
the fairest of all. Unless we find him, we shall think 
we have failed. It is no casual beauty that will content 
us ; what we are seeking after is that supreme beauty 
which must of necessity be unique. 

— What then is one to do, if the matter be really 
thus ? Perhaps you know better than I. All I see is 
that very few of us would have time to examine all the 
various sects of philosophy in turn, even if we began in 



MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 



305 



early life. I know not how it is ; but though you seem 
to me to speak reasonably, yet (I must confess it) you 
have distressed me not a little by this exact exposition 
of yours. I was unlucky in coming out to-day, and in 
my falling in with you, who have thrown me into utter 
perplexity by your proof that the discovery of truth is 
impossible, just as I seemed to be on the point of 
attaining my hope. 

— Blame your parents, my child, not me! Or 
rather, blame mother Nature herself, for giving us but 
seventy or eighty years instead of making us as long- 
lived as Tithonus. For my part, I have but led you 
from premise to conclusion. 

— Nay ! you are a mocker ! I know not wherefore, 
but you have a grudge against philosophy ; and it is your 
entertainment to make a jest of her lovers. 

— Ah ! Hermotimus ! what the Truth may be, you 
philosophers may be able to tell better than I. But so 
much at least I know of her, that she is one by no 
means pleasant to those who hear her speak : in the 
matter of pleasantness, she is far surpassed by False- 
hood : and Falsehood has the pleasanter countenance. 
She, nevertheless, being conscious of no alloy within, 
discourses with boldness to all men, who therefore have 
little love for her. See how angry you are now because 
I have stated the truth about certain things of which we 
are both alike enamoured — that they are hard to come 
by. It is as if you had fallen in love with a statue and 
hoped to win its favour, thinking it a human creature ; 
and I, understanding it to be but an image of brass 01 
stone, had shown you, as a friend, that your love was 
impossible, and thereupon you had conceived that I bore 
you some ill-will. 

— But still, does it not follow from what you said, 
that we must renounce philosophy and pass our days h) 
idleness ? 



3o6 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap, 

— When did yon hear me say that ? I did but assert 
that if we are to seek after philosophy, whereas there are 
many ways professing to lead thereto, we must with much 
exactness distinguish them. 

— Well, Lucian ! that we must go to all the schools 
in turn, and test what they say, if we are to choose the 
right one, is perhaps reasonable ; but surely ridiculous, 
unless we are to live as many years as the Phoenix, to 
be so lengthy in the trial of each ; as if it were not 
possible to learn the whole by the part ! They say that 
Pheidias, when he was shown one of the talons of a lion, 
computed the stature and age of the animal it belonged 
to, modelling a complete lion upon the standard of a 
single part of it. You too would recognise a human 
hand were the rest of the body concealed. Even so 
with the schools of philosophy : — the leading doctrines 
of each might be learned in an afternoon. That over- 
exactness of yours, which required so long a time, is by 
no means necessary for making the better choice. 

— You are forcible, Hermotimus ! with this theory 
of The Whole by the Part. Yet, methinks, I heard you 
but now propound the contrary. But tell me ; would 
Pheidias when he saw the lion's talon have known that it 
was a lion's, if he had never seen the animal ? Surely, 
the cause of his recognising the part was his knowledge 
of the whole. There is a way of choosing one's philosophy 
even less troublesome than yours. Put the names of all 
the philosophers into an urn. Then call a little child, 
and let him draw the name of the philosopher you shall 
follow all the rest of your days. 

— Nay ! be serious with me. Tell me ; did you evei 
buy wine ? 

— Surely. 

— And did you first go the whole round of the wine- 
merchants, tasting and comparing their wines ? 

— By no means. 



XXIV MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 307 

— No ! You were contented to order the first good 
wine you found at your price. By tasting a little you 
were ascertained of the quality of the whole cask. How 
if you had gone to each of the merchants in turn, and 
said, ' I wish to buy a coiy/e of wine. Let me drink out 
the whole cask. Then I shall be able to tell which is 
best, and where I ought to buy.' Yet this is what you 
would do with the philosophies. Why drain the cask 
when you might taste, and see ? 

— How slippery you are ; how you escape from one's 
fingers ! Still, you have given me an advantage, and 
are in your own trap. 

— How so ? 

— Thus ! You take a common object known to 
every one, and make wine the figure of a thing which 
presents the greatest variety in itself, and about which 
all men are at variance, because it is an unseen and 
difficult thing. I hardly know wherein philosophy and 
wine are alike unless it be in this, that the philosophers 
exchange their ware for money, like the wine-merchants; 
some of them with a mixture of water or worse, or giving 
short measure. However, let us consider your parallel. 
The wine in the cask, you say, is of one kind through- 
out. But have the philosophers — has your own master 
even — but one and the same thing only to tell you, 
every day and all days, on a subject so manifold? 
Otherwise, how can you know the whole by the tasting 
of one part ? The whole is not the same — Ah ! and it 
may be that God has hidden the good wine of philosophy 
at the bottom of the cask. You must drain it to the end 
if you are to find those drops of divine sweetness you 
seem so much to thirst for ! Yourself, after drinking so 
deeply, are still but at the beginning, as you said. But 
is not philosophy rather like this ? Keep the figure of 
the merchant and the cask : but let it be filled, not with 
wine, but with every sort of grain. You come to buy. 



3o8 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

The merchant hands you a little of the wheat which lies 
at the top. Could you tell by looking at that, whether 
the chick-peas were clean, the lentils tender, the beans 
full ? And then, whereas in selecting our wine we risk 
only our money ; in selecting our philosophy we risk 
ourselves, as you told me — might ourselves sink into the 
dregs of 'the vulgar herd.' Moreover, while you may 
not drain the whole cask of wine by way of tasting. 
Wisdom grows no less by the depth of your drinking. 
Nay ! if you take of her, she is increased thereby. 

And then I have another similitude to propose, as 
regards this tasting of philosophy. Don't think I blas- 
pheme her if I say that it may be with her as with some 
deadly poison, hemlock or aconite. These too, though 
they cause death, yet kill not if one tastes but a minute 
portion. You would suppose that the tiniest particle 
must be sufficient. 

— Be it as you will, Lucian ! One must live a 
hundred years : one must sustain all this labour ; other- 
wise philosophy is unattainable. 

— Not so ! Though there were nothing strange in 
that, if it be true, as you said at first, that Life is short 
and art is long. But now you take it hard that we are 
not to see you this very day, before the sun goes down, 
a Chrysippus, a Pythagoras, a Plato. 

— You overtake me, Lucian ! and drive me into a 
corner ; in jealousy of heart, I believe, because I have 
made some progress in doctrine whereas you have 
neglected yourself. 

— Well ! Don't attend to me ! Treat me as a 
Corybant, a fanatic : and do you go forward on this road 
of yours. Finish the journey in accordance w^ith the 
view you had of these matters at the beginning of it. 
Only, be assured that my judgment on it will remain un- 
changed. Reason still says, that without criticism, 
without a clear, exact, unbiassed intelligence to try them, 



XXIV MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 309 

all those theories — all things — will have been seen but 
in vain. 'To that end,' she tells us, 'much time is 
necessary, many delays of judgment, a cautious gait ; 
repeated inspection.' And we are not to regard the 
outward appearance, or the reputation of wisdom, in any 
of the speakers ; but like the judges of Areopagus, who 
try their causes in the darkness of the night, look only 
to what they say. 

— Philosophy, then, is impossible, or possible only in 
another life ! 

— Hermotimus ! I grieve to tell you that all this 
even, may be in truth insufficient. After all, we may 
deceive ourselves in the belief that we have found some- 
thing : — like the fishermen ! Again and again they let 
down the net. At last they feel something heavy, and 
with vast labour draw up, not a load of fish, but only a 
pot full of sand, or a great stone. 

— I don't understand what you mean by the net. It 
is plain that you have caught me in it. 

— Try to get out ! You can swim as well as another. 
'%Ve may go to all philosophers in turn and make trial of 
them. Still, I for my part, hold it by no means certain 
that any one of them really possesses what we seek.' 
The truth may be a thing that not one of them has yet 
found. You have twenty beans in your hand, and you 
bid ten persons guess how many : one says five, another 
fifteen ; it is possible that one of them may tell the true 
number ; but it is not impossible that all may be wrong. 
So it is with the philosophers. All alike are in search of 
Happiness — what kind of thing it is. One says one 
thing, one another : it is pleasure ; it is virtue ; — what 
not? And Happiness may indeed be one of those 
things. But it is possible also that it may be still some 
thing else, different and distinct from them all. 

— What is this ? — There is something, I know not 
how, very sad and disheartening in what you say. We 



3IO MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chaf 

seem to have come round in a circle to the spot whence 
we started, and to our first incertitude. Ah ! Lucian, 
what have you done to me? You have proved my 
priceless pearl to be but ashes, and all my past labour to 
have been in vain. 

— Reflect, my friend, that you are not the first person 
who has thus failed of the good thing he hoped for. 
All philosophers, so to speak, are but fighting about the 
'ass's shadow.' To me you seem like one who should 
weep, and reproach fortune because he is not able to 
climb up into heaven, or go down into the sea by Sicily 
and come up at Cyprus, or sail on wings in one day from 
Greece to India. And the true cause of his trouble is 
that he has based his hope on what he has seen in a 
dream, or his own fancy has put together; without 
previous thought whether what he desires is in itself 
attainable and within the compass of human nature. 
Even so, methinks, has it happened with you. As you 
dreamed, so largely, of those wonderful things, came 
Reason, and woke you up from sleep, a little roughly : 
and then you are angry with Reason, your eyes being 
still but half open, and find it hard to shake off sleep for 
the pleasure of what you saw therein. Only, don't be 
angry with me, because, as a friend, I would not suffer 
you to pass your life in a dream, pleasant perhaps, but 
still only a dream — because I wake you up and demand 
that you should busy yourself with the proper business 
of life, and send you to it possessed of common sense. 
What your soul was full of just now is not very difTerent 
from those Gorgons and Chimaeras and the like, which 
the poets and the painters construct for us, fancy-free : — 
things which never were, and never will be, though 
many believe in them, and all like to see and hear of 
them, just because they are so strange and odd. 

And you too, methinks, having heard from some such 
maker of marvels of a certain woman of a fairness beyond 



XXIV MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 



311 



nature — beyond the Graces, beyond Venus Urania 
herself — asked not if he spoke truth, and whether 
this woman be really alive in the world, but straightway 
fell in love with her; as they say that Medea was 
enamoured of Jason in a dream. And what more than 
anything else seduced you, and others like you, into that 
passion, for a vain idol of the fancy, is, that he who told 
you about that fair woman, from the very moment when 
you first believed that what he said was true, brought 
forward all the rest in consequent order. Upon her 
alone your eyes were fixed ; by her he led you along, 
when once you had given him a hold upon you — led 
you along the straight road, as he said, to the beloved 
one. All was easy after that. None of you asked again 
whether it was the true way ; following one after another, 
like sheep led by the green bough in the hand of the 
shepherd. He moved you hither and thither with his 
finger, as easily as water spilt on a table ! 
/ My friend ! Be not so lengthy in preparing the 
banquet, lest you die of hunger ! I saw one who 
poured water into a mortar, and ground it with all his 
might with a pestle of iron, fancying he did a thing use- 
ful and necessary : but it remained water only, none the 
less." 

Just there the conversation broke off suddenly, and 
the disputants parted. The horses were come for 
Lucian. The boy went on his way, and Marius onward, 
to visit a friend whose abode lay further. As he returned 
to Rome towards evening the melancholy aspect, natural 
to a city of the dead, had triumphed over the superficial 
gaudiness of the early day. He could almost have 
fancied Canidia there, picking her way among the rickety 
lamps, to rifle some neglected or ruined tomb ; for these 
tombs were not all equally well cared for (Post mortem 
nescio /) and it had been one of the pieties of Aurelius 
to frame a severe law to prevent the defacing of such 



312 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap, xxiv 

monuments. To Marius there seemed to be some new 
meaning in that terror of isolation, of being left alone in 
these places, of which the sepulchral inscriptions were so 
full. A blood-red sunset was dying angrily, and its wild 
glare upon the shadowy objects around helped to com- 
bine the associations of this famous way, its deeply 
graven marks of immemorial travel, together with the 
earnest questions of the morning as to the true way of 
that other sort of travelling, around an image, almost 
ghastly in the traces of its great sorrows — bearing along 
for ever, on bleeding feet, the instrument of its punish- 
ment — which was all Marius could recall distinctly of a 
certain Christian legend he had heard. The legend told 
of an encounter at this very spot, of two wayfarers on 
the Appian Way, as also upon some very dimly discerned 
mental journey, altogether different from himself and his 
late companions — an encounter between Love, Hterally 
fainting by the road, and Love " travelling in the great- 
ness of his strength," Love itself, suddenly appearing to 
sustain that other. A strange contrast to anything actu- 
ally presented in that morning's conversation, it seemed 
nevertheless to echo its very words — " Do they never 
come down again," he heard once more the well-modu- 
lated voice : " Do they never come down again from the 
heights, to help those whom they left here below ? " — 
" And we too desire, not a fair one, but the fairest of 
ill / Unless we find him, we shall think we have failed." 



CHAPTER XXV 

SUNT LACRIM^ RERUM 

It was herome a habit with Marius — one of his 
modernisms — developed by his assistance at the Em- 
peror's " conversations with himself," to keep a register 
of the movements of his own private thoughts and 
humours ; not continuously indeed, yet sometimes for 
lengthy intervals, during which it was no idle self- 
indulgence, but a necessity of his intellectual life, to 
"confess himself," with an intimacy, seemingly rare 
among the ancients ; ancient writers, at all events, having 
been jealous, for the most part, of affording us so much 
as a glimpse of that interior self, which in many cases 
would have actually doubled the interest of their object- 
ive informations. - 

^'If a particular tutelary or genius^' writes Marius, 
" according to old belief, walks through life beside each 
one of us, mine is very certainly a capricious creature. 
He fills one with wayward, unaccountable, yet quite 
irresistible humours, and seems always to be in collusion 
with some outward circumstance, often trivial enough in 
itself — the condition of the weather, forsooth ! — the 
people one meets by chance — the things one happens to 
overhear them say, veritable evoStot o-vfifSoXoi, or omens 
by the wayside, as the old Greeks fancied — to push on 
the unreasonable prepossessions of the moment into 



3H 



MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap 



weighty motives. It was doubtless a quite explicable, 
physical fatigue that presented me to myself, on awaking 
this morning, so lack-lustre and trite. But I must needs 
take my petulance, contrasting it with my accustomed 
morning hopefulness, as a sign of the ageing of appetite, 
of a decay in the very capacity of enjoyment. We need 
some imaginative stimulus, some not impossible ideal 
such as may shape vague hope, and transform it into 
effective desire, to carry us year after year, without 
disgust, through the routine -work which is so large a 
part of life. 

" Then, how if appetite, be it for real or ideal, should 
itself fail one after awhile ? Ah, yes ! it is of cold 
always that men die ; and on some of us it creeps very 
gradually. In truth, I can remember just such a lack- 
lustre condition of feeling once or twice before. But I 
note, that it was accompanied then by an odd indiffer- 
ence, as the thought of them occurred to me, in regard 
to the sufferings of others — a kind of callousness, so 
unusual with me, as at once to mark the humour it 
accompanied as a palpably morbid one that could not 
last. Were those sufferings, great or little, I asked 
myself then, of more real consequence to them than 
mine to me, as I remind myself that ' nothing that will 
end is really long ' — long enough to be thought of im- 
portance? But to-day, my own sense of fatigue, the 
pity I conceive for myself, disposed me strongly to 
a tenderness for others. For a moment the whole 
world seemed to present itself as a hospital of sick 
persons ; many of them sick in mind ; all of whom it 
would be a brutality not to humour, not to indulge. 

" Why, when I went out to walk off my wayward 
. fancies, did I confront the very sort of incident (my un- 
fortunate genius had surely beckoned it from afar to vex 
me) hkely to irritate them further ? A party of men were 
coming down the street. They were leading a fine 



XXV MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 315 

racehorse ; a handsome beast, but badly hurt some- 
where, in the circus, and useless. They were taking 
him to slaughter ; and I think the animal knew it : he 
cast such looks, as if of mad appeal, to those who passed 
him, as he went among the strangers to whom his former 
owner had committed him, to die, in his beauty and 
pride, for just that one mischance or fault ; although the 
morning air was still so animating, and pleasant to snuff. 
I could have fancied a human soul in the creature, 
sweUing against its luck. And I had come across the 
incident ''just when it would figure to me as the very 
symbol of our poor humanity, in its capacities for pain, 
its wretched accidents, and those imperfect sympathies, 
which can never quite identify us with one another ; the 
very power of utterance and appeal to others seeming to 
fail us, in proportion as our sorrows come home to our- 
selves, are really our own. We are constructed for 
suffering ! What proofs of it does but one day afford, if 
we care to note them, as we go — a whole long chaplet 
of sorrow'ful mysteries ! Sunt lacrimce. reruin et mentein 
mortalia tangunt. 

" Men's fortunes touch us ! The little children of 
one of those institutions for the support of orphans, now 
become fashionable among us by way of memorial of 
eminent persons deceased, are going, in long file, along 
the street, on their way to a hoHday in the country. 
They halt, and count themselves with an air of triumph, 
to show that they are all there. Their gay chatter has 
disturbed a little group of peasants ; a young woman 
and her husband, who have brought the old mother, 
now past work and witless, to place her in a house 
provided for such afflicted people. They are fairly 
affectionate, but anxious how the thing they have to 
do may go — hope only she may permit them to leave 
her there behind quietly. And the poor old soul is 
excited by the noise made by the children, and partly 



3i6 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

aware of what is going to happen with her. She too 
begins to count — one, two, three, five — on her trem- 
bhng fingers, misshapen by a hfe of toil. ' Yes ! yes ! 
and twice five make ten ' — they say^ to pacify her. It 
is her last appeal to be taken home again ; her proof 
that all is not yet up with her ; that she is, at all events, 
still as capable as those joyous children. 

" At the baths, a party of labourers are at work upon 
one of the great brick furnaces, in a cloud of black dust. 
A frail young child has brought food for one of them, 
and sits apart, waiting till his father comes — watching 
the labour, but with a sorrowful distaste for the din and 
dirt. He is regarding wistfully his own place in the 
world, there before him. His mind, as he watches, is 
grown up for a moment ; and he foresees, as it were, 
in that moment, all the long tale of days, of early 
awakings, of his own coming life of drudgery at work 
like this. 

"A man comes along carrying a boy whose rough 
work has already begun — the only child — whose presence 
beside him sweetened the father's toil a little. The boy 
has been badly injured by a fall of brick-work, yet, with 
an effort, rides boldly on his father's shoulders. It will 
be the way of natural affection to keep him alive as long 
as possible, though with that miserably shattered body 
— * Ah ! with us still, and feeling pur care beside him ! ' 
— and yet surely not without a heartbreaking sigh of 
relief, alike from him and them, when the end comes. 

" On the alert for incidents like these, yet of necessity 
passing them by on the other side, I find it hard to get 
rid of a sense that I, for one, have failed in love. I 
could yield to the humour till I seemed to have had my 
share in those great public cruelties, the shocking legal 
crimes which are on record, like that cold-blooded 
slaughter, according to law, of the four hundred slaves 
in the reign of Nero, because one of their number was 



XXV MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 31? 

thought to have murdered his master. The reproach of 
that, together with the kind of facile apologies those who 
had no share in the deed may have made for it, as they 
went about quietly on their own affairs that day, seems 
to come very close to me, as I think upon it. And to 
how many of those now actually around me, whose life 
is a sore one, must I be indifferent, if I ever become 
aware of their soreness at all ? To some, perhaps, the 
necessary conditions of my own life may cause me to be 
opposed, in a kind of natural conflict, regarding those 
interests which actually determine the happiness of theirs. 
I would that a stronger love might arise in my heart ! 

" Yet there is plenty of charity in the world. My 
patron, the Stoic emperor, has made it even fashionable. 
To celebrate one of his brief returns to Rome lately from 
the war, over and above a largess of gold pieces to all 
who would, the public debts were forgiven. He made 
a nice show of it : for once, the Romans entertained 
themselves with a good-natured spectacle, and the whole 
town came to see the great bonfire in the Forum, into 
which all bonds and evidence of debt were thrown on 
delivery, by the emperor himself; many private creditors 
following his example. That was done well enough ! 
But still the feeHng returns to me, that no/charity of ours 
can get at a certain natural unkindness which 1 find in 
things themselves. 

"When I first came to Rome, eager to observe its 
religion, especially its antiquities of religious usage, I 
assisted at the most curious, perhaps, of them all, the 
most distinctly marked with that immobility which is 
a sort of ideal in the Roman religion. The ceremony 
took place at a singular spot some miles distant from the 
city, among the low hills on the bank of the Tiber, 
beyond the Aurelian Gate. There, in a little wood of 
venerable trees, piously allowed their own way, age after 
age — ilex and cypress remaining where they fell at last, 



3i8 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN cha?. 

one over the other, and all caught, in that early May- 
time, under a riotous tangle of wild clematis — was to 
be found a magnificent sanctuary, in which the members 
of the Arval College assembled themselves on certain 
days. The axe never touched those trees — Nay ! it 
was forbidden to introduce any iron thing whatsoever 
within the precincts ; not only because the deities of 
these quiet places hate to be disturbed by the harsh 
noise of metal, but also in memory of that better age — 
the lost Golden Age — the homely age of the potters, of 
which the central act of the festival was a commemoration. 

" The preliminary ceremonies were long and com- 
plicated, but of a character familiar enough. Peculiar 
to the time and place was the solemn exposition, after 
lavation of hands, processions backwards and forwards, 
and certain changes of vestments, of the identical 
earthen vessels — veritable relics of the old religion of 
Numa ! — the vessels from which the holy Numa himself 
had eaten and drunk, set forth above a kind of altar, amid 
a cloud of flowers and incense, and many lights, for the 
veneration of the credulous or the faithful. 

" They were, in fact, cups or vases of burnt clay, rude 
in form : and the religious veneration thus offered to them 
expressed men's desire to give honour to a simpler age, 
before iron had found place in human life : the persua 
sion that that age was worth remembering : a hope that 
it might come again. 

"That a Numa, and his age of gold, would return, 
has been the hope or the dream of some, in every period. 
Yet if he did come back, or any equivalent of his presence, 
he could but weaken, and by no means smite through, 
that root of evil, certainly of sorrow, of outraged human 
sense, in things, which one must carefully distinguish 
from all preventible accidents. Death, and the little 
perpetual daily dyings, which have something of its sting, 
be must necessarily leave untouched. And, methinks, 



XXV MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 319 

that were all the rest of man's life framed entirely to his 
liking, he would straightway begin to sadden himself, 
over the fate — say, of the flowers ! For there is, there 
has come to be since Numa lived perhaps, a capacity for 
sorrow in his heart, which grows with all the growth, 
alike of the individual and of the race, in intellectual 
delicacy and power, and which will find its aliment. 

"Of that sort of golden age, indeed, one discerns 
even now a trace, here and there. Often have I main- 
tained that, in this generous southern country at least, 
Epicureanism is the special philosophy of the poor. 
How little I myself really need, when people leave me 
alone, with the intellectual powers at work serenely. 
The drops of falling water, a few wild flowers with their 
priceless fragrance, a few tufts even of half-dead leaves, 
changing colour in the quiet of a room that has but light 
and shadow in it ; these, for a susceptible mind, might 
well do duty for all the glory of Augustus. I notice 
sometimes what I conceive to be the precise character of 
the fondness of the roughest working-people for their 
young children, a fine appreciation, not only of theiv 
serviceable affection, but of their visible graces : and 
indeed, in this country, the children are almost alw^ays 
worth looking at. I see daily, in fine weather, a child 
like a delicate nosegay, running to meet the rudest of 
brick-makers as he comes from work. She is not at all 
afraid to hang upon his rough hand : and through her, 
he reaches out to, he makes his own, something from that 
strange region, so distant from him yet so real, of the 
world's refinement. What is of finer soul, or of finer 
stuff in things, and demands delicate touching — to him 
the delicacy of the little child represents that : it initiates 
him into that. There, surely, is a touch of the secular 
gold, of a perpetual age of gold. But then again, think 
for a moment, with what a hard humour at the nature of 
things, his struggle for bare life will go on, if the child 



320 



MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 



should happen to die. I observed to-day, under one ot 
the archways of the baths, two children at play, a little 
seriously — a fair girl and her crippled younger brother. 
Two toy chairs and a little table, and sprigs of fir set 
upright in the sand for a garden ! They played at house- 
keeping. Well ! the girl thinks her life a perfectly good 
thing in the service of this crippled brother. But she 
will have a jealous lover in time : and the boy, though 
his face is not altogether unpleasant, is after all a hope- 
less cripple. 

" For there is a certain grief in things as they are, 
in man as he has come to be, as he certainly is, over 
and above those griefs of circumstance which are in a 
measure removable — some inexplicable shortcoming, or 
misadventure, on the part of nature itself — death, and 
old age as it must needs be, and that watching for their 
approach, which makes every stage of life like a dying 
over and over again. Almost all death is painful, and 
in every thing that comes to an end a touch of death, 
and therefore of wretched coldness struck home to one, 
of remorse, of loss and parting, of outraged attachments. 
Given faultless men and women, given a perfect state of 
society which should have no need to practise on men's 
susceptibilities for its own selfish ends, adding one turn 
more to the wheel of the great rack for its own interest 
or amusement, there would still be this evil in the world, 
of a certain necessary sorrow and desolation, felt, just in 
proportion to the moral, or nervous perfection men have 
attained to. And what we need in the world, over 
against that, is a certain permanent and general power 
of compassion — humanity's standing force of self-pity — 
as an elementary ingredient of our social atmosphere, if 
we are to live in it at all. I wonder, sometimes, in what 
way man has cajoled himself into the bearing of his 
burden thus far, seeing how every step in the capacity of 
apprehension his labour has won for him, from age to 



XXV MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 321 

age, must needs increase his dejection. It is as if the 
increase of knowledge were but an increasing revelation 
of the radical hopelessness of his position :^and I would 
that there were one even as I, behind this vain show of 
things ! 

"At all events, the actual conditions of our life being 
as they are, and the capacity for suffering so large a 
principle in things — since the only principle, perhaps, to 
which we may always safely trust is a ready sympathy 
with the pain one actually sees — it follows that the 
practical and effective difference between men will lie in 
their power of insight into those conditions, their power 
of sympathy. The future will be with those who have 
most of it ; while for the present, as I persuade myself, 
those who have much of it, have something to hold by, 
even in the dissolution of a world, or in that dissolution 
of self, which is, for every one, no less than the dissolution 
of the world it represents for him. Nearly all of us, I 
suppose, have had our moments, in which any effective 
sympathy for us on the part of others has seemed impos- 
sible ; in which our pain has seemed a stupid outrage 
upon us, like some overwhelming physical violence, from 
which we could take refuge, at best, only in some mere 
general sense of goodwill — somewhere in the world 
perhaps. And then, to one's surprise, the discovery of 
that goodwill, if it were only in a not unfriendly animal, 
may seem to have explained, to have actually justified to 
us, the fact of our pain. There have been occasions, 
certainly, when I have felt that if others cared for me as 
I cared for them, it would be, not so much a consolation, 
as an equivalent, for what one has lost or suffered : a 
realised profit on the summing up of one's accounts : a 
touching of that absolute ground amid all the changes of 
phenomena, such as our philosophers have of late con- 
fessed themselves quite unable to discover. In the mere 
clinging of human creatures to each other, nay ! in one's 

Y 



322 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap, xxv 

own solitary self-pity, amid the effects even of what might 
appear irredeemable loss, I seem to touch the eternal. 
Something in that pitiful contact, something new and 
true, fact or apprehension of fact, is educed, which, on 
a review of all the perplexities of life, satisfies our moral 
sense, and removes that appearance of unkindness in the 
soul of things themselves, and assures us that not every- 
thing has been in vain. 

"And I know not how, but in the thought thus 
suggested, I seem to take up, and re-knit myself to, a 
well-remembered hour, when by some gracious accident — 
it was on a journey — all things about me fell into a more 
perfect harmony than is their wont. Everything seemed 
to be, for a moment, after all, almost for the best. 
Through the train of my thoughts, one against another, 
it was as if I became aware of the dominant power of 
another person in controversy, wrestling with me. I seem 
to be come round to the point at which I left off then. 
The antagonist has closed with me again. A protest 
comes, out of the very depths of man's radically hopeless 
condition in the world, with the energy of one of those 
suffering yet prevailing deities, of which old poetry tells. 
Dared one hope that there is a heart, even as ours, in 
that divine ' Assistant ' of one's thoughts — a heart even 
as mine, behind this vain show of things ! " 



CHAPTER XXVI 

THE MARTYRS 

" Ah ! voil^ les ames qu'il falloit a la mienne ! ** 

Rousseau. 

The charm of its poetry, a poetry of the affections, 
wonderfully fresh in the midst of a threadbare world, 
would have led Marius, if nothing else had done so, 
again and again, to Cecilia's house. He found a range 
of intellectual pleasures, altogether new to him, in the 
sympathy of that pure and elevated soul. Elevation of 
soul, generosity, humanity — little by little it came to 
seem to him as if these existed nowhere else. The 
sentiment of maternity, above all, as it might be under- 
stood there, — its claims, with the claims of all natural 
feeling everywhere, down to the sheep bleating on the 
hills, nay ! even to the mother-wolf, in her hungry cave 
— seemed to have been vindicated, to have been enforced 
anew, by the sanction of some divine pattern thereof. 
He saw its legitimate place in the world given at last to 
the bare capacity for suffering in any creature, however 
feeble or apparently useless. In this chivalry, seeming 
to leave the world's heroism a mere property of the stage, 
in this so scrupulous fideHty to what could not help itself, 
could scarcely claim not to be forgotten, what a contrast 
to the hard contempt of one's own or other's pain, of 
death, of glory even, in those discourses of Aurelius ! 



324 



MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 



But if Marius thought at times that some long- 
cherished desires were now about to blossom for him, 
in the sort of home he had sometimes pictured to him- 
self, the very charm of which would lie in its contrast to 
any random affections : that in this woman, to whom 
children instinctively clung, he might find such a sister, 
at least, as he had always longed for; there were also 
circumstances which reminded him that a certain rule 
forbidding second marriages, was among these people 
still in force ; ominous incidents, moreover, warning a 
susceptible conscience not to mix together the spirit and 
the flesh, nor make the matter of a heavenly banquet 
serve for earthly meat and drink. 

One day he found Cecilia occupied with the burial of 
one of the children of her household. It was from the 
tiny brow of such a child, as he now heard, that the new 
light had first shone forth upon them — through the light 
of mere physical life, glowing there again, when the child 
was dead, or supposed to be dead. The aged servant 
of Christ had arrived in the midst of their noisy grief; 
and mounting to the little chamber where it lay, had 
returned, not long afterwards, with the child stirring in 
his arms as he descended the stair rapidly ; bursting 
open the closely-wound folds of the shroud and scattering 
the funeral flowers from them, as the soul kindled once 
more through its limbs. 

Old Roman common -sense had taught people to 
occupy their thoughts as little as might be with children 
who died young. Here, to-day, however, in this curious 
house, all thoughts were tenderly bent on the little waxen 
figure, yet with a kind of exultation and joy, notwith- 
standing the loud weeping of the mother. The other 
children, its late companions, broke with it, suddenly, 
into the place where the deep black bed lay open to 
receive it. Pushing away the grim fossores^ the grave- 
diggers, they ranged themselves around it in order, and 



XXVI MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 325 

chanted that old psalm of theirs — Laudate pueri domi- 
num I Dead children, children's graves — Marius had 
been always half aware of an old superstitious fancy in 
his mind concerning them ; as if in coming near them 
he came near the failure of some lately-born hope or 
purpose of his ^wn. And now, perusing intently the 
expression with which Cecilia assisted, directed, returned 
afterwards to her house, he felt that he too had had to-day 
his funeral of a little child. But it had always been his 
policy, through all his pursuit of " experience," to take 
flight in time from any too disturbing passion, from any 
sort of affection likely to quicken his pulses beyond the 
point at which the quiet work of life was practicable. 
Had he, after all, been taken unawares, so that it was no 
longer possible for him to fly? At least, during the 
journey he took, by way of testing the existence of any 
chain about him, he found a certain disappointment at 
his heart, greater than he could have anticipated ; and 
as he passed over the crisp leaves, nipped off in multi- 
tudes by the first sudden cold of winter, he felt that the 
mental atmosphere within himself was perceptibly colder. 

Yet it was, finally, a quite successful resignation 
which he achieved, on a review, after his manner, during 
that absence, of loss or gain. The image of Cecilia, it 
would seem, was already become for him like some matter 
of poetry, or of another man's story, or a picture on the 
wall. And on his return to Rome there had been a 
rumour in that singular company, of things which spoke 
certainly not of any merely tranquil loving : hinted rather 
that he had come across a world, the lightest contact 
with which might make appropriate to himself also the 
precept that " They which have wives be as they that 
have none." 

This was brought home to him, when, in early spring, 
he ventured once more to listen to the sweet singing ol 
the Eucharist. It breathed more than ever the spirit 



326 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap, 

of a wonderful hope — of hopes more daring than poor, 
labouring humanity had ever seriously entertained before, 
though it was plain that a great calamity was befallen. 
Amid stifled sobbing, even as the pathetic words of the 
psalter relieved the tension of their hearts, the people 
around him still wore upon their faces their habitual 
gleam of joy, of placid satisfaction. They were still 
under the influence of an immense gratitude in thinking, 
even amid their present distress, of the hour of a great 
deliverance. As he followed again that mystical dialogue, 
he felt also again, like a mighty spirit about him, the 
potency, the half-realised presence, of a great multitude, 
as if thronging along those awful passages, to hear the 
sentence of its release from prison ; a company which 
represented nothing less than — orbis terrarii?7i — i\\e 
whole company of mankind. And the special note of 
the day expressed that relief — a sound new to him, 
drawn deep from some old Hebrew source, as he con- 
jectured, Alleluia ! repeated over and over again, 
Alleluia I Alleluia I at every pause and movement of 
the long Easter ceremonies. 

And then, in its place, by way of sacred lection, 
although in shocking contrast with the peaceful dignity 
of all around, came the Epistle of the churches of Lyons 
and Viefine, to "their sister," the church of Rome. For 
the "Peace" of the church had been broken — broken, 
as Marius could not but acknowledge, on the responsi- 
bility of the emperor Aurelius himself, following tamely, 
and as a matter of course, the traces of his predecessors, 
gratuitously enlisting, against the good as well as the evil 
of that great pagan world, the strange new heroism of 
which this singular message was full. The greatness of 
it certainly lifted away all merely private regret, inclining 
one, at last, actually to draw sword for the oppressed, as 
if in some new order of knighthood — 

" The pains which our brethren have endured we 



XXVI MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 327 

have no power fully to tell, for the enemy came upon us 
with his whole strength. But the grace of God fought 
for us, set free the weak, and made ready those who, like 
pillars, were able to bear the weight. These, coming now 
into close strife with the foe, bore every kind of pang and 
shame. At the time of the fair which is held here with 
a great crowd, the governor led forth the Martyrs as a 
show. Holding what was thought great but little, and 
that the pains of to-day are not deserving to be measured 
against the glory that shall be made known, these worthy 
wrestlers went joyfully on their way ; their delight and the 
sweet favour of God mingling in their faces, so that their 
bonds seemed but a goodly array, or like the golden 
bracelets of a bride. Filled with the fragrance of Christ, 
to some they seemed to have been touched with earthly 
perfumes. 

" Vettius Epagathus, though he was very young, 
because he would not endure to see unjust judgment 
given against us, vented his anger, and sought to be 
heard for the brethren, for he was a youth of high place. 
Whereupon the governor asked him whether he also were 
a Christian. He confessed in a clear voice, and was 
added to the number of the Martyrs. But he had the 
Paraclete within him ; as, in truth, he showed by the 
fulness of his love ; glorying in the defence of his 
brethren, and to give his life for theirs. 

" Then was fulfilled the saying of the Lord that the 
day should come. When he that slayeth you will think 
that he doeth God service. Most madly did the mob, the 
governor and the soldiers, rage against the handmaiden 
Blandina, in whom Christ showed that what seems mean 
among men is of price with Him. For whilst we all, 
and her earthly mistress, who was herself one of the con- 
tending Martyrs, were fearful lest through the weakness 
of the flesh she should be unable to profess the faith, 
Blandina was filled with such power that her tormentors, 



328 MARIUS TilE EPICUREAN chap. 

t'oUowing upon each other from morning until night, owned 
that they were overcome, and had no more that they 
could do to her ; admiring that she still breathed after 
her whole body was torn asunder. 

" But this blessed one, in the very midst of her ' wit- 
ness,' renewed her strength; and to repeat, I am Christ's! 
was to her rest, refreshment, and relief from pain. As 
for Alexander, he neither uttered a groan nor any sound 
at all, but in his heart talked with God. Sanctus, the 
deacon, also, having borne beyond all measure pains 
devised by them, hoping that they would get something 
from him, did not so much as tell his name ; but to all 
questions answered only, / am ChrisVs ! For this he 
confessed instead of his name, his race, and everything 
beside. Whence also a strife in torturing him arose 
between the governor and those tormentors, so that 
when they had nothing else they could do they set red- 
hot plates of brass to the most tender parts of his body. 
But he stood firm in his profession, cooled and fortified 
by that stream of living water which flows from Christ. 
His corpse, a single wound, having wholly lost the form 
of man, was the measure of his pain. But Christ, pain- 
ing in him, set forth an ensample to the rest — that there 
is nothing fearful, nothing painful, where the love of the 
Father overcomes. And as all those cruelties were made 
null through the patience of the Martyrs, they bethought 
them of other things ; among which was their imprison- 
ment in a dark and most sorrowful place, where many 
were privily strangled. But destitute of man's aid, they 
were filled with power from the Lord, both in body and 
mind, and strengthened their brethren. Also, much joy 
was in our virgin mother, the Church ; for, by means of 
these, such as were fallen away retraced their steps — 
were again conceived, were filled again with lively heat, 
and hastened to make the profession of their faith. 

"The holy bishop Pothinus, who was now past 



XXVI MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 



;29 



ninety years old and weak in body, yet in his heat of 
soul and longing for martyrdom, roused what strength 
he had, and was also cruelly dragged to judgment, and 
gave witness. Thereupon he suffered many stripes, all 
thinking it would be a wickedness if they fell short in 
cruelty towards him, for that thus their own gods would 
be avenged. Hardly drawing breath, he was thrown 
into prison, and after two days there died. 

" After these things their martyrdom was parted into 
divers manners. Plaiting as it were one crown of many 
colours and every sort of flowers, they offered it to God. 
Maturus, therefore, Sanctus and Blandina, were led to 
the wild beasts. And Maturus and Sanctus passed 
through all the pains of the amphitheatre, as if they had 
suffered nothing before : or rather, as having in many 
trials overcome, and now contending for the prize itself, 
were at last dismissed. 

" But Blandina was bound and hung upon a stake, 
and set forth as food for the assault of the wild beasts. 
And as she thus seemed to be hung upon the Cross, 
by her fiery prayers she imparted much alacrity to those 
contending Witnesses. For as they looked upon her 
with the eye of flesh, through her, they saw Him that 
was crucified. But as none of the beasts would then 
touch her, she was taken dowm from the Cross, and sent 
back to prison for another day : that, though weak and 
mean, yet clothed with the mighty wrestler, Christ 
Jesus, she might by many conquests give heart to her 
brethren. 

" On the last day, therefore, of the shows, she was 
brought forth again, together with Ponticus, a lad of 
about fifteen years old. They were brought in day by 
day to behold the pains of the rest. And when they 
wavered not, the mob was full of rage ; pitying neither 
the youth of the lad, nor the sex of the maiden. Hence, 
they drave them through the whole round of pain. And 



330 



MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap, xxvi 



Ponticus, taking heart from Blandina, having borne well 
the whole of those torments, gave up his hfe. Last of 
all, the blessed Blandina herself, as a mother that had 
given life to her children, and sent them like conquerors 
to the great King, hastened to them, with joy at the end, 
as to a marriage-feast ; the enemy himself confessing 
that no woman had ever borne pain so manifold and 
great as hers. 

" Nor even so was their anger appeased ; some 
among them seeking for us pains, if it might be, yet 
greater; that the saying might be fulfilled. He that is 
unjust, let him be unjust still. And their rage against 
the Martyrs took a new form, insomuch that we were in 
great sorrow for lack of freedom to entrust their bodies 
to the earth. Neither did the night-time, nor the offer 
of money, avail us for this matter ; but they set watch 
with much carefulness, as though it were a great gain to 
hinder their burial. Therefore, after the bodies had 
been displayed to view for many days, they were at last 
burned to ashes, and cast into the river Rhone, which 
flows by this place, that not a vestige of them might be 
left upon the earth. For they said, Now shall we set 
whether they will rise again, and whether their God can 
save them out of our hands." 



I 



CHAPTER XXVII 

THE TRIUMPH OF MARCUS AURELIUS 

Not many months after the date of that epistle, Marius, 
then expecting to leave Rome for a long time, and in 
fact about to leave it for ever, stood to witness the 
triumphal entry of Marcus Aurelius, almost at the exact 
spot from which he had watched the emperor's solemn 
return to the capital on his own first coming thither. 
His triumph was now a "full" one — -Justus Triujtiphus — 
justified, by far more than the due amount of bloodshed 
in those Northern wars, at length, it might seem, happily 
at an end. Among the captives, amid the laughter of 
the crowds at his blowsy upper garment, his trousered 
legs and conical wolf-skin cap, walked our own ancestor, 
representative of subject Germany, under a figure very 
familiar in later Roman sculpture ; and, though cer- 
tainly with none of the grace of the Dying Gaul, yet 
with plenty of uncouth pathos in his misshapen features, 
and the pale, servile, yet angry eyes. His children, 
white-skinned and golden-haired " as angels," trudged 
beside him. His brothers, of the animal world, the 
ibex, the wild-cat, and the reindeer stalking and trumpet- 
ing grandly, found their due place in the procession ; 
and among the spoil, set forth on a portable frame that 
it might be distinctly seen (no mere model, but the 
very house he had lived in), a wattled cottage, in all the 



332 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

simplicity of its snug contrivances against the cold, and 
well-calculated to give a moment's delight to his new, 
sophisticated masters. 

Andrea Mantegna, working at the end of the fifteenth 
century, for a society full of antiquarian fervour at the 
sight of the earthy relics of the old Roman people, day 
by day returning to light out of the clay — childish still, 
moreover, and with no more suspicion of pasteboard 
than the old Romans themselves, in its unabashed love of 
open-air pageantries, has invested this, the greatest, and 
alas ! the most characteristic, of the splendours of imperial 
Rome, with a reality livelier than any description. The 
homely sentiments for which he has found place in 
his learned paintings are hardly more lifelike than the 
great public incidents of the show, there depicted. And 
then, with all that vivid realism, how refined, how dignified, 
hov/ select in type, is this reflection of the old Roman 
world ! — now especially, in its time-mellowed red and gold, 
for the modern visitor to the old English palace. 

It was under no such selected types that the great 
procession presented itself to Marius ; though, in effect, 
he found something there prophetic, so to speak, and 
evocative of ghosts, as susceptible minds will do, upon a 
repetition after long interval of some notable incident, 
which may yet perhaps have no direct concern for 
themselves. In truth, he had been so closely bent of 
late on certain very personal interests that the broad 
current of the world's doings seemed to have withdrawn 
into the distance, but now, as he witnessed this pro- 
cession, to return once more into evidence for him. 
The world, certainly, had been holding on its old w^ay, 
and was all its old self, as it thus passed by dramatically, 
accentuating, in this favourite spectacle, its mode of 
viewing things. And even apart from the contrast 
of a very different scene, he would have found it, just 
now, a somewhat vulgar spectacle. The temples, wide 



xxvii MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 333 

open, with their ropes of roses flapping in the wind 
against the rich, reflecting marble, their startling draperies 
and heavy cloud of incense, were but the centres of a 
great banquet spread through all the gaudily coloured 
streets of Rome, for which the carnivorous appetite of 
those who thronged them in the glare of the mid-day sun 
was frankly enough asserted. At best, they were but 
calling their gods to share with them the cooked, sacri- 
ficial, and other meats, reeking to the sky. The child, 
who was concerned for the sorrows of one of those 
Northern captives as he passed by, and explained to 
his comrade — " There's feeling in that hand, you know ! " 
benumbed and lifeless as it looked in the chain, seemed, 
in a moment, to transform the entire show into its own 
proper tinsel. Yes ! these Romans were a coarse, a 
vulgar people ; and their vulgarities of soul in full 
evidence here. And Aurelius himself seemed to have 
undergone the world's coinage, and fallen to the level of 
his reward, in a mediocrity no longer golden. 

Yet if, as he passed by, almost filling the quaint old 
circular chariot with his magnificent golden -flowered 
attire, he presented himself to Marius, chiefly as one who 
had made the great mistake ; to the multitude he came 
as a more than magnanimous conqueror. That he had 
" forgiven " the innocent wife and children of the dashing 
and almost successful rebel Avidius Cassius, now no 
more, was a recent circumstance still in memory. As the 
children went past — not among those who, ere the emperor 
ascended the steps of the Capitol, would be detached 
from the great progress for execution, happy rather, and 
radiant, as adopted members of the imperial family — 
the crowd actually enjoyed an exhibition of the moral 
order, such as might become perhaps the fashion. 
And it was in consideration of some possible touch of a 
heroism herein that might really have cost him some- 
thing, that Marius resolved to seek the emperor once 



334 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

more, with an appeal for common-sense, for reason and 
justice. 

He had set out at last to revisit his old home ; and 
knowing that Aurelius was then in retreat at a favourite 
villa, which lay almost on his way thither, determined there 
to present himself. Although the great plain was dying 
steadily, a new race of wild birds establishing itself there, 
as he knew enough of their habits to understand, and 
the idle co?itadino, with his never-ending ditty of decay 
and death, replacing the lusty Roman labourer, never 
had that poetic region between Rome and the sea more 
deeply impressed him than on this sunless day of early 
autumn, under which all that fell within the immense 
horizon was presented in one uniform tone of a clear, 
penitential blue. Stimulating to the fancy as was that 
range of low hills to the northwards, already troubled 
with the upbreaking of the Apennines, yet a want of 
quiet in their outline, the record of wild fracture there, 
of sudden upheaval and depression, marked them as but 
the ruins of nature ; while at every little descent and 
ascent of the road might be noted traces of the aban- 
doned work of man. From time to time, the way was 
still redolent of the floral relics of summer, daphne and 
myrtle - blossom, sheltered in the little hollows and 
ravines. At last, amid rocks here and there piercing the 
soil, as those descents became steeper, and the main line 
of the Apennines, now visible, gave a higher accent to 
the scene, he espied over Xho plateau, almost like one oi 
those broken hills, cutting the horizon towards the sea. 
the old brown villa itself, rich in memories of one after 
another of the family of the Antonines. As he approached 
it, such reminiscences crowded upon him, above all of 
the life there of the aged Antoninus Pius, in its wonder- 
ful mansuetude and calm. Death had overtaken him 
here at the precise moment when the tribune of the 
watch had received from his lips the word Aequanimitas I 



xxvii MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 335 

as the watchword of the night. To see their emperor 
living there Uke one of his simplest subjects, his hands 
red at vintage-time with the juice of the grapes, hunting, 
teaching his children, starting betimes, with all who 
cared to join him, for long days of antiquarian research 
in the country around : — this, and the like of this, had 
seemed to mean the peace of mankind. 

Upon that had come — like a stain ! it seemed to 
Marius just then — the more intimate life of Faustina, the 
life of Faustina at home. Surely, that marvellous but 
malign beauty must still haunt those rooms, like an 
unquiet, dead goddess, who might have perhaps, after 
all, something reassuring to tell surviving mortals about 
her ambiguous self. When, two years since, the news 
had reached Rome that those eyes, always so persistently 
turned to vanity, had suddenly closed for ever, a strong 
desire to pray had come over Marius, as he followed in 
fancy on its wild way the soul of one he had spoken with 
now and again, and whose presence in it for a time the 
world of art could so ill have spared. Certainly, the 
honours freely accorded to embalm her memory were 
poetic enough — the rich temple left among those wild 
villagers at the spot, now it was hoped sacred for ever, 
where she had breathed her last ; the golden image, in her 
old place at the amphitheatre ; the altar at which the newly 
married might make their sacrifice ; above all, the great 
foundation for orphan girls, to be called after her name. 

The latter, precisely, was the cause why Marius failed 
in fact to see Aurelius again, and make the chivalrous 
effort at enlightenment he had proposed to himself 
Entering the villa, he learned from an usher, at the door 
of the long gallery, famous still for its grand prospect in 
the memory of many a visitor, and then leading to the 
imperial apartments, that the emperor was already in 
audience : Marius must await his turn — he knew not 
how long it might be. An odd audience it seemed ; for 



336 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

at that moment, through the closed door, came shouts 
of laughter, the laughter of a great crowd of children — 
the "Faustinian Children" themselves, as he afterwards 
learned — happy and at their ease, in the imperial presence. 
Uncertain, then, of the time for which so pleasant a 
reception might last, so pleasant that he would hardly 
have wished to shorten it, Marius finally determined to 
proceed, as it was necessary that he should accomplish 
the first stage of his journey on this day. The thing was 
not to be — Vale! anima infelicissima I — He might at least 
carry away that sound of the laughing orphan children, as 
a not unamiable last impression of kings and their houses. 
The place he was now about to visit, especially as 
the resting-place of his dead, had never been forgotten. 
Only, the first eager period of his life in Rome had 
slipped on rapidly ; and, almost on a sudden, that old 
time had come to seem very long ago. An almost 
burdensome solemnity had grown about his memory of 
the place, so that to revisit it seemed a thing that needed 
preparation : it was what he could not have done hastily. 
He half feared to lessen, or disturb, its value for himself 
And then, as he travelled leisurely towards it, and so far 
with quite tranquil mind, interested also in many another 
place by the way, he discovered a shorter road to the 
end of his journey, and found himself indeed approach- 
ing the spot that was to him like no other. Dreaming 
now only of the dead before him, he journeyed on 
rapidly through the night ; the thought of them increas- 
ing on him, in the darkness. It was as if they had been 
waiting for him there through all those years, and felt his 
footsteps approaching now, and understood his devotion, 
quite gratefully, in that lowliness of theirs, in spite of its 
tardy fulfilment. As morning came, his late tranquillity 
of mind had given way to a grief which surprised him by 
its freshness. He was moved more than he could have 
thought possible by so distant a sorrow. " To-day f' — 



XXVII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 337 

they seemed to be saying as the hard dawn broke, — 
" To-day\ he will come ! " At last, amid all his distrac- 
tions, they were become the main purpose of what he was 
then doing. The world around it, when he actually 
reached the place later in the day, was in a mood very 
different from his : — so work-a-day, it seemed, on that 
fine afternoon, and the villages he passed through so 
silent ; the inhabitants being, for the most part, at their 
labour in the country. Then, at length, above the tiled 
outbuildings, were the walls of the old villa itself, with 
the tower for the pigeons ; and, not among cypresses, but 
half-hidden by aged poplar-trees, their leaves like golden 
fruit, the birds floating around it, the conical roof of the 
tomb itself. In the presence of an old servant who 
remembered him, the great seals were broken, the rusty 
key turned at last in the lock, the door was forced out 
among the weeds grown thickly about it, and Marius 
was actually in the place which had been so often in 
his thoughts. 

He was struck, not however without a touch of 
remorse thereupon, chiefly by an odd air of neglect, the 
neglect of a place allowed to remain as when it was last 
used, and left in a hurry, till long years had covered all 
alike with thick dust — the faded flowers, the burnt-out lamps, 
the tools and hardened mortar of the workmen who had 
had something to do there. A heavy fragment of wood- 
work had fallen and chipped open one of the oldest of the 
mortuary urns, many hundreds in number ranged around 
the walls. It was not properly an urn, but a minute 
coffin of stone, and the fracture had revealed a piteous 
spectacle of the mouldering, unburned remains within ; 
the bones of a child, as he understood, which might 
have died, in ripe age, three times over, since it slipped 
away from among his great-grandfathers, so far up in 
the line. Yet the protruding baby hand seemed to stir 
up in him feelings vivid enough, bringing him intimately 

z 



338 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap, xxvii 

within the scope of dead people's grievances. He noticed, 
side by side with the urn of his mother, that of a boy of 
about his own age — one of the serving-boys of the house- 
hold — who had descended hither, from the lightsome 
world of childhood, almost at the same time with her. 
It seemed as if this boy of his own age had taken filial 
place beside her there, in his stead. That hard feeling, 
again, which had always lingered in his mind with the 
thought of the father he had scarcely known, melted 
wholly away, as he read the precise number of his years, 
and reflected suddenly — He was of my own present age ; 
no hard old man, but with interests, as he looked round 
him on the world for the last time, even as mine to-day ! 
And with that came a blinding rush of kindness, as if 
two ahenated friends had come to understand each other 
at last. There was weakness in all this ; as there is in all 
care for dead persons, to which nevertheless people will 
always yield in proportion as they really care for one 
another. With a vain yearning, as he stood there, still 
to be able to do something for them, he reflected that such 
doing must be, after all, in the nature of things, mainly 
for himself. His own epitaph might be that old one — 
'EcrxaTos Tov ISlov yevovg — I/e was the last of his race I 
Of those who might come hither after himself probably 
no one would ever again come quite as he had done to- 
day ; and it was under the influence of this thought that 
he determined to bury all that, deep below the surface, 
to be remembered only by him, and in a way which 
would claim no sentiment from the indiflerent. That took 
many days — was like a renewal of lengthy old burial rites 
— as he himself watched the work, early and late ; coming 
on the last day very early, and anticipating, by stealth, the 
last touches, while the workmen were absent ; one young 
lad only, finally smoothing down the earthy bed, greatly 
surprised at the seriousness with which Marius flung in 
his flowers, one by one, to mingle with the dark mould. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

ANIMA NATURALITER CHRISTIANA 

Those eight days at his old home, so mournfully 
occupied, had been for Marius in some sort a forcible 
disruption from the world and the roots of his life in it. 
He had been carried out of himself as never before ; and 
when the time was over, it was as if the claim over him 
of the earth below had been vindicated, over against 
the interests of that living world around. Dead, yet 
sentient and caressing hands seemed to re^ch out of the 
ground and to be clinging about him. Looking back 
sometimes now, from about the midway of life — the age, 
as he conceived, at which one begins to re-descend one's 
life — though antedating it a little, in his sad humour, he 
would note, almost with surprise, the unbroken placidity 
of the contemplation in which it had been passed. His 
own temper, his early theoretic scheme of things, would 
have pushed him on to movement and adventure. Actu- 
ally, as circumstances had determined, all its movement 
had been inward; movement of observation only, or 
even of pure meditation ; in part, perhaps, because 
throughout it had been something of a meditatio mortis^ 
ever facing towards the act of final detachment. Death, 
however, as he reflected, must be for every one nothing 
less than the fifth or last act of a drama, and, as such, 
was likely to have something of the stirring character of 



340 



MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 



a denouement. And, in fact, it was in form tragic 
enough that his end not long afterwards came to him. 

In the midst of the extreme weariness and depression 
which had followed those last days, Cornelius, then, as 
it happened, on a journey and travelling near the place, 
finding traces of him, had become his guest at White- 
nights. It was just then that Marius felt, as he had 
never done before, the value to himself, the overpower- 
ing charm, of his friendship. " More than brother ! " — 
he felt — " like a son also ! " contrasting the fatigue of 
soul which made himself in effect an older man, with the 
irrepressible youth of his companion. For it was still the 
marvellous hopefulness of Cornelius, his seeming pre- 
rogative over the future, that determined, and kept alive, 
all other sentiment concerning him. A new hope had 
sprung up in the world of which he, Cornelius, was a 
depositary, which he was to bear onward in it. Identify- 
ing himself with Cornelius in so dear a friendship, through 
him, Marius seemed to touch, to ally himself to, actually 
to become a possessor of the coming world ; even as 
happy parents reach out, and take possession of it, in 
and through the survival of their children. For in these 
days their intimacy had grown very close, as they moved 
hither and thither, leisurely, among the country-places 
thereabout, Cornelius being on his way back to Rome, 
till they came one evening to a little town (Marius 
remembered that he had been there on his first 
journey to Rome) which had even then its church and 
legend — the legend and holy relics of the martyr 
Hyacinthus, a young Roman soldier, whose blood had 
stained the soil of this place in the reign of the emperor 
Trajan. 

The thought of that so recent death, haunted Marius 
through the night, as if with audible crying and sighs 
above the restless wind, which came and went around 
their lodging. But towards dawn he slept heavily ; and 



XXVIII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 341 

awaking in broad daylight, and finding Cornelius absent, 
set forth to seek him. The plague was still in the place 
— had indeed just broken out afresh ; wdth an outbreak 
also of cruel superstition among its wild and miserable 
inhabitants. Surely, the old gods were wroth at the 
presence of this new enemy among them ! And it was 
no ordinary morning into which Marius stepped forth. 
There w^as a menace in the dark masses of hill, and 
motionless wood, against the gray, although apparently 
unclouded sky. Under this sunless heaven the earth 
itself seemed to fret and fume with a heat of its own, in 
spite of the strong night-wind. And now the wind had 
fallen. Marius felt that he breathed some strange heavy 
fluid, denser than any common air. He could have 
fancied that the world had sunken in the night, far 
below its proper level, into some close, thick abysm of 
its own atmosphere. The Christian people of the town, 
hardly less terrified and overwrought by the haunting 
sickness about them than their pagan neighbours, were 
at prayer before the tomb of the martyr ; and even as 
Marius pressed among them to a place beside Cornelius, 
on a sudden the hills seemed to roll like a sea in motion, 
around the w^hole compass of the horizon. For a 
moment Marius supposed himself attacked with some 
sudden sickness of brain, till the fall of a great mass of 
building convinced him that not himself but the earth 
under his feet was giddy. A few moments later the 
little market-p^.ace was alive with the rush of the dis- 
tracted inhabitants from their tottering houses ; and as 
they waited anxiously for the second shock of earthquake, 
a long-smouldering suspicion leapt precipitately into well- 
defined purpose, and the whole body of people was 
carried forward towards the band of worshippers below. 
An hour later, in the wild tumult which followed, the 
earth had been stained afresh with the blood of the 
martyrs Felix and Faustinus — Flores apparuerunt in 



342 



MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 



terra nostra ! — and their brethren, together with Cor- 
nehus and Marius, thus, as it had happened, taken among 
them, were prisoners, reserved for the action of the law. 
Marius and his friend, with certain others, exercising the 
privilege of their rank, made claim to be tried in Rome, 
or at least in the chief town of the district ; where, in- 
deed, in the troublous days that had now begun, a legal 
process had been already instituted. Under the care of 
a military guard the captives were removed on the same 
day, one stage of their journey ; sleeping, for security, 
during the night, side by side with their keepers, in the 
rooms of a shepherd's deserted house by the wayside. 

It was surmised that one of the prisoners was not a 
Christian : the guards were forward to make the utmost 
pecuniary profit of this circumstance, and in the night, 
Marius, taking advantage of the loose charge kept over 
them, and by means partly of a large bribe, had contrived 
that Cornelius, as the really innocent person, should be 
dismissed in safety on his way, to procure, as Marius 
explained, the proper means of defence for himself, when 
the time of trial came. 

And in the morning Cornelius in fact set forth alone, 
from their miserable place of detention. Marius beHeved 
that Cornelius was to be the husband of Cecilia; and that, 
perhaps strangely, ad but added to the desire to get 
him away safely. — vVe wait for the great crisis which is 
to try what is in us : we can hardly bear the pressure of 
our hearts, as we think of it : the lonely wrestler, or 
victim, which imagination foreshadows to us, can hardly 
be one's self; it seems an outrage of our destiny that we 
should be led along so gently and imperceptibly, to so 
terrible a leaping-place in the dark, for more perhaps 
than lif^ or death. At last, the great act, the critical 
momei^t itself comes, easily, almost unconsciously. 
Another motion of the clock, and our fatal Hne — the 
"great climacteric point" — has been passed, which 



XXVIII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 



343 



changes ourselves or our lives In one quarter of an 
hour, under a sudden, unconLrollable impulse, hardly 
weighing what he did, almost as a matter of course and 
as lightly as one hires a bed for one's night's rest on a 
journey, Marius had taken upon himself all the heavy 
risk of the position in which Cornelius had then been — 
the long and wearisome delays of judgment, which were 
possible ; the danger and wretchedness of a long journey 
in "this manner ; possibly the danger of death. He had 
delivered his brother, after the manner he had some- 
times vaguely anticipated as a kind of distinction in his 
destiny; though indeed always with wistful calculation as to 
what it might cost him : and in the first moment after 
the thing was actually done, he felt only satisfaction at 
his courage, at the discovery of his possession of " nerve." 
Yet he was, as we know, no hero, no heroic martyr — 
had indeed no right to be ; and when he had seen 
Cornelius depart, on his blithe and hopeful way, as he 
believed, to become the husband of Cecilia ; actually, 
as it hgd happened, without a word of farewell, suppos- 
ing Marius was almost immediately afterwards to follow 
(Marius indeed having avoided the moment of leave- 
taking with its possible call for an explanation of the 
circumstances) the reaction came. He could only guess, 
of course, at what might really happen. So far, he had 
but taken upon himself, in the stead of Cornelius, a 
certain amount of personal risk ; though he hardly 
supposed himself to be facing the danger of death. 
Still, especially for one such as he, with all the sensi- 
bilities of which his whole manner of life had been but a 
promotion, the situation of a person under trial on a 
criminal charge was actually full of distress. To him, 
in truth, a death such as the recent death of those 
saintly brothers, seemed no glorious end. In his 
case, at least, the Martyrdom, as it was called — the 
overpowering act of testimony that Heaven had come 



344 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

down among men — would be but a common execution : 
from the drops of his blood there would spring no 
miraculous, poetic flowers ; no eternal aroma would 
indicate the place of his burial ; no plenary grace, over- 
flowing for ever upon those who might stand around it. 
Had there been one to listen just then, there would have 
come, from the very depth of his desolation, an eloquent 
utterance at last, on the irony of men's fates, on the 
singular accidents of life and death. 

The guards, now safely in possession of whatever 
money and other valuables the prisoners had had on 
them, pressed them forward, over the rough mountain 
paths, altogether careless of their sufferings. The 
great autumn rains were falling. At night the soldiers 
lighted a fire ; but it was impossible to keep warm. 
From time to time they stopped to roast portions of the 
meat they carried with them, making their captives sit 
round the fire, and pressing it upon them. But v/eari- 
ness and depression of spirits had deprived Marius of 
appetite, even if the food had been more attractive, and 
for some days he partook of nothing but bad bread and 
water. All through the dark mornings they dragged over 
boggy plains, up and down hills, wet through sometimes 
with the heavy rain. Even in those deplorable circum- 
stances, he could but notice the wild, dark beauty of 
those regions — the stormy sunrise, and placid spaces 
of evening. One of the keepers, a very young soldier, 
won him at times, by his simple kindness, to talk a 
little, with wonder at the lad's half- conscious, poetic 
dehght in the adventures of the journey. At times, the 
whole company would lie down for rest at the roadside, 
hardly sheltered from the storm ; and in the deep fatigue 
of his spirit, his old longing for inopportune sleep over- 
powered him. — Sleep anywhere, and under any con- 
ditions, seemed just then a thing one might well exchange 
the remnants of one's life for. 



I 



XXVIII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 345 

It must have been about the fifth night, as he after- 
wards conjectured, that the soldiers, beheving him Ukely 
to die, had finally left him unable to proceed further, 
under the care of some country people, who to the 
extent of their power certainly treated him kindly in his 
sickness. He awoke to consciousness after a severe 
attack of fever, lying alone on a rough bed, in a kind of 
hut. It seemed a remote, mysterious place, as he looked 
around in the silence; but so fresh — lying, in fact, in a 
high pasture-land among the mountains — that he felt he 
should recover, if he might but just lie there in quiet 
long enough. Even during those nights of delirium he 
had felt the scent of the new-mown hay pleasantly, with 
a dim sense for a moment that he was lying safe in his 
old home. The sunlight lay clear beyond the open door; 
and the sounds of the cattle reached him softly from 
the green places around. Recalling confusedly the tor- 
turing hurry of his late journeys, he dreaded, as his con- 
sciousness of the whole situation returned, the coming 
of the guards. But the place remained in absolute 
stillness. He was, in fact, at hberty, but for his own 
disabled condition. And it was certainly a genuine 
clinging to life that he felt just then, at the very bottom 
of his mind. So it had been, obscurely, even through 
all the wild fancies of his delirium, from the moment 
which followed his decision against himself, in favour of 
Cornelius. 

The occupants of the place were to be heard presently, 
coming and going about him on their business : and it 
was as if the approach of death brought out in all their 
force the merely human sentiments. There is that in 
death which certainly makes indifferent persons anxious 
to forget the dead : to put them — those ahens — away 
out of their thoughts altogether, as soon as may be. 
Conversely, in the deep isolation of spirit which was now 
creeping upon Marius, the faces of these people, casually 



346 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

visible, took a strange hold on his affections ; the link of 
general brotherhood, the feeling of human kinship, assert- 
ing itself most strongly when it was about to be severed 
for ever. At nights he would find this face or that im- 
pressed deeply on his fancy ; and, in a troubled sort of 
manner, his mind would follow them onwards, on the ways 
of their simple, humdrum, everyday life, with a peculiar 
yearning to share it with them, envying the calm, earthy 
cheerfulness of all their days to be, still under the sun, 
though so indifferent, of course, to him ! — as if these 
rude people had been suddenly lifted into some height of 
earthly good-fortune, which must needs isolate them from 
himself. 

Tristem nej7ime?n fecit — he repeated to himself ; his 
old prayer shaping itself now almost as his epitaph. Yes ! 
so much the very hardest judge must concede to him. 
And the sense of satisfaction which that thought left with 
him disposed him to a conscious effort of recollection, 
while he lay there, unable now even to raise his head, as 
he discovered on attempting to reach a pitcher of water 
which stood near. Revelation, vision, the discovery of 
a vision, the seeing of a perfect humanity, in a perfect 
world — through all his alternations of mind, by some 
dominant instinct, determined by the original necessities 
of his own nature and character, he had always set that 
above the havings or even the doifig^ of anything. For, 
such vision, if received with due attitude on his part, was, 
in reality, the being something, and as such was surely a 
pleasant offering or sacrifice to whatever gods there might 
be, observant of him. And how goodly had the vision 
been ! — one long unfolding of beauty and energy in 
things, upon the closing of which he might gratefully 
utter his " Vixi/" Even then, just ere his eyes were 
to be shut for ever, the things they had seen seemed a 
veritable possession in hand ; the persons, the places, 
above all, the touching image of Jesus, apprehended 



XXVIII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 347 

dimly through the expressive faces, the crying of tht 
children, in that mysterious drama, with a sudden sense 
of peace and satisfaction now, which he could not explain 
to himself. Surely, he had prospered in life ! And 
again, as of old, the sense of gratitude seemed to bring 
with it the sense also of a living person at his side. 

For still, in a shadowy world, his deeper wisdom had 
ever been, with a sense of economy, with a jealous estimate 
of gain and loss, to use life, not as the means to some 
problematic end, but, as far as might be, from dying hour to 
dying hour, an end in itself — a kind of music, all-sufficing 
to the duly trained ear, even as it died out on the air. 
Yet now, aware still in that suffering body of such vivid 
powers of mind and sense, as he anticipated from time 
to time how his sickness, practically without aid as he 
must be in this rude place, was likely to end, and that 
the moment of taking final account was drawing very near, 
a consciousness of waste would come, with half-angry 
tears of self-pity, in his great weakness — a blind, outraged, 
angry feeling of wasted power, such as he might have 
experienced himself standing by the deathbed of another., 
in condition like his own. 

And yet it was the fact, again, that the vision of men 
and things, actually revealed to him on his way through 
the world, had developed, with a wonderful largeness, the 
faculties to which it addressed itself, his general capacity 
of vision ; and in that too was a success, in the view of 
certain, very definite, well-considered, undeniable possi- 
bihties. Throughout that elaborate and lifelong educa- 
tion of his receptive powers, he had ever kept in view the 
purpose of preparing himself towards possible further 
revelation some day — towards some ampL'er vision, which 
should take up into itself and explain this world's delight- 
ful shows, as the scattered fragments of a poetry, till 
then but half-understood, might be taken up into the 
text of a lost epic, recovered at last. At this moment, 



348 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

his unclouded receptivity of soul, grown so steadily 
through all those years, from experience to experience, 
was at its height; the house ready for the possible guest; 
the tablet of the mind white and smooth, for whatsoever 
divine fingers might choose to write there. And was 
not this precisely the condition, the attitude of mind, 
to which something higher than he, yet akin to him, 
would be likely to reveal itself; to which that influence 
he had felt now and again like a friendly hand upon his 
shoulder, amid the actual obscurities of the world, would 
be likely to make a further explanation ? Surely, the 
aim of a true philosophy must He, not in futile efforts 
towards the complete accommodation of man to the 
circumstances in which he chances to find himself, but 
in the maintenance of a kind of candid discontent, in 
the face of the very highest achievement ; the unclouded 
and receptive soul quitting the world finally, with the 
same fresh wonder with which it had entered the world 
still unimpaired, and going on its Wind way at last with 
the consciousness of some profound enigma in things, as 
but a pledge of something further to come. Marius 
seemed to understand how one might look back upon 
life here, and its excellent visions, as but the portion of 
a racecourse left behind him by a runner still swift 
of foot : for a moment, he experienced a singular curi- 
osity, almost an ardent desire to enter upon a future, the 
possibilities of which seemed so large. 

And just then, again amid the memory of certain 
touching actual words and images, came the thought of 
the great hope, that hope against hope, which, as he 
conceived, had arisen — Lux sede7itibus in tenebris — upon 
the aged world ; the hope Cornelius had seemed to bear 
away upon him in his strength, with a buoyancy which 
had caused Marius to feel, not so much that by a 
caprice of destiny, he had been left to die in his place, 
as that Cornelius was gone on a mission to deliver him 



xxviii MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 349 

also from death. There had been a permanent protest 
established in the world, a plea, a perpetual after- 
thought, which humanity henceforth would ever possess 
in reserve, against any wholly mechanical and dishearten- 
ing theory of itself and its conditions. That was a 
thought which relieved for him the iron outline of the 
horizon about him, touching it as if with soft light from 
beyond ; filling the shadowy, hollow places to which he 
was on his way with the warmth of definite affections ; 
confirming also certain considerations by which he seemed 
to link himself to the generations to come in the world 
he was leaving. Yes ! through the survival of their 
children, happy parents are able to think calmly, and 
with a very practical affection, of a world in which they 
are to have no direct share; planting with a cheerful 
good-humour, the acorns they carry about with them, 
that their grand-children may be shaded from the sun 
by the broad oak-trees of the future. That is nature's 
way of easing death to us. It was thus too, surprised, 
delighted, that Marius, under the power of that new 
hope among men, could think of the generations to 
come after him. Without it, dim in truth as it was, he 
could hardly have dared to ponder the world which 
limited all he really knew, as it would be when he should 
have departed from it. A strange lonesomeness, like 
physical darkness, seemed to settle upon the thought of 
it ; as if its business hereafter must be, as far as he was 
concerned, carried on in some inhabited, but distant 
and alien, star. Contrariwise, with the sense of that 
hope warm about him, he seemed to anticipate some 
kindly care for himself, never to fail even on earth, a 
care for his very body — that dear sister and companion 
of his soul, outworn, suffering, and in the very article of 
death, as it was now. 

For the weariness came back tenfold ; and he had 
finally to abstain from thoughts like these, as from what 



350 MARIUS THE EPICUREAN chap. 

caused physical pain. And then, as before in the 
wretched, sleepless nights of those forced marches, he 
would try to fix his mind, as it were impassively, and like 
a child thinking over the toys it loves, one after another, 
that it may fall asleep thus, and forget all about them 
the sooner, on all the persons he had loved in hfe — ^^on his 
love for them, dead or living, grateful for his love or not, 
rather than on theirs for him — letting their images pass 
away again, or rest with him, as they would. In the 
bare sense of having loved he seemed to find, even amid 
this foundering of the ship, that on which his soul might 
"assuredly rest and depend." One after another, he 
suffered those faces and voices to come and go, as in 
some mechanical exercise, as he might have repeated all 
the verses he knew by heart, or like the telling of beads 
one by one, with many a sleepy nod between-whiles. 

For there remained also, for the old earthy creature 
still within him, that great blessedness of physical 
slumber. To sleep, to lose one's self in sleep — that, as 
he had always recognised, was a good thing. And it 
was after a space of deep sleep that he awoke amid 
the murmuring voices of the people who had kept and 
tended him so carefully through his sickness, now kneel- 
ing around his bed : and what he heard confirmed, in 
the then perfect clearness of his soul, the inevitable 
suggestion of his own bodily feelings. He had often 
dreamt he was condemned to die, that the hour, with 
wild thoughts of escape, was arrived ; and waking, with 
the sun all around him, in complete liberty of life, had 
been full of gratitude for his place there, alive still, in 
the land of the living. He read surely, now, in the 
manner, the doings, of these people, some of whom were 
passing out through the doorway, where the heavy sun 
light in very deed lay, that his last morning was come, 
and turned to think once more of the beloved. Often 
had he fancied of old that not to die on a dark or rainy 



XXVIII MARIUS THE EPICUREAN 351 

day might itself have a little alleviating grace or favour 
about it. The people around his bed were i)raying 
fervently — Abi ! Abi I A?nma Christiana! In the 
moments of his extreme helplessness their mystic bread 
had been placed, had descended like a snow-flake from 
the sky, between his lips. Gentle fingers had applied 
to hands and feet, to all those old passage-ways of the 
senses, through which the world had come and gone for 
him, now so dim and obstructed, a medicinable oil. It 
was the same people who, in the gray, austere evening 
of that day, took up his remains, and buried them 
secretly, with their accustomed prayers ; but with joy 
also, holding his death, according to their generous view 
in this matter, to have been of the nature of a martyr- 
dom ; and martyrdom, as the church had always said, a 
kind of sacrament with plenary grace, 

1881-1884. 



THE END 



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